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BIBLE TEACHING BY
MODERN METHODS

BIBLE

MODERN

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EDITED BY THE

REV. FRANK JOHNSON

EDITOR OF '
' THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CHRONICLE AND CHRISTIAN OUTLOOK "

LONDON
ANDREW MELROSE

16, PILGRIM STREET, E.G.
1907

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . vii

THE PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

By Rev. W. T. DAVISON, M.A., D.D., Professor of Theology in
Richmond College, Surrey, and President Wesleyan Methodist
Conference, 1901.

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND ITS BEARING UPON
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHING :

1. THE OLD TESTAMENT . . . 13

By Prof. JAMES ORR, D.D., Professor of Apologetics and Theology
in the United Free Church College, Glasgow.

2. THE NEW TESTAMENT . . . -23

By Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A., D.D., of Hampstead, Ex-Chairman of
the Congregational Union of England and Wales.

THE METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE :

1. THE SCIENTIFIC v. THE HAPHAZARD . . 30

By Rev. A. F. MITCHELL, M.A., Vicar of St. Augustine's, Sheffield.

2. THE USE OF THE BIBLE FOR CHRISTIAN EDIFICATION 45

By Rev. A. E. GARVIE, M.A., D.D., Principal of New College,
London.

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
TEACHER . . . . .54

By JOHN ADAMS, M.A., B.Sc., Professor of Education in the
University of London, and Principal of London Day Training College.

TEACHER TRAINING . . . . - 65

A., D.
lA

By DAVID FORSYTH, M.A., D.Sc., Principal Leeds Central High
School.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS :

1. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE FOR SUNDAY SCHOOLS ? . 7 1

By Rev. FRANK JOHNSON, Editor of "The Sunday School
Chronicle and Christian Outlook."

2. DEFECTS AND SUGGESTED REMEDIES - -94

By Prof. A. S. PEAKE, M.A., B.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis and
Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Victoria University, Manchester.

3. THE PROBLEM OF LESSON-SELECTION . . 105

By Mr. WILLIAM H. GROSER, B.Sc., Senior Hon. Secretary
of the Sunday School Union.

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE AND EDUCATIONAL
LEADERSHIP . . . . . .118

By the Rev. R. A. FALCONER, D.D., D.LITT., Principal of Presbyterian
College, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 130

By Rev. W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, M.A., D.D., President of
Hartford (Conn.) Theological Seminary.

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER TRAINER . . 140

By Rev. W. F. ADENEY, M.A., D.D., Principal of Lancashire
Independent College.

REPRESENTATIVES ATTENDING THE CONFERENCE .

PORTRAITS OF READERS OF PAPERS.
PORTRAITS OF CHAIRMEN.

THE DISCUSSIONS :

FIRST SESSION (CHAIRMAN : THE VEN. ARCHDEACON

SINCLAIR, D.D.) . . . - . . 156

SECOND SESSION (CHAIRMAN : REV. J. MONRO GIBSON,

D.D., LL.D.) ..... 166

THIRD SESSION (CHAIRMAN : REV. F. B. MEYER, B.A.) . 172
FOURTH SESSION (CHAIRMAN : REV. C. H. KELLY) . 178

INTRODUCTION

twentieth century has begun for Great
A Britain with stirring appeals from many
quarters for self-criticism and readjustment. In
every direction old institutions and methods are
being called upon to justify their existence.
Christianity itself is required to restate its message
with regard to modern needs and in the terminology
which new light and knowledge involve.

It would have been strange in such circum-
stances if the Sunday School had escaped the
time-spirit. So far from doing so it has for some
years experienced an agitation for Reform which
has steadily grown in area and intensity. There
is hi the fact no cause for regret. The agitation
is a proof of the new place which the Sunday
School occupies in the modern world. Time was
when the institution was socially and intellectually
disconsidered, and laboured under disqualifications
that prevented it from taking its place as a serious
factor in religious education. That tune is rapidly
becoming only a memory, Of late years not only
has the social and intellectual status of the Sunday
School been raised and its teaching improved,

Vll

viii BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

but the gulf between it and the Church has been
bridged. Ministers are now working with teachers
in closest and most harmonious co-operation, and
where once their presence was apt to be resented,
it is now cordially invited and welcomed. These
conditions make possible reform on wise lines, and
justify an optimistic forecast of the future.

That reform was needed no intelligent teacher
will deny. Many have parted from the Sunday
School as a non-progressive institution in a
world of progress. Others have outgrown the
Sunday School while it remained stationary.
And they were compelled to do it ; for, as
Holmes says in a striking passage, " Grow we
must, though we outgrow all we love." Yet,
using another figure, he reminds those who have
left the old companion a seeming wreck while
they flew by under a pyramid of canvas that
there are other forces than the noisy winds. " Lo !
at dawn she is still in sight, it may be in advance
of us. Some deep ocean-current has been moving
her on, strong, but silent, yes, stronger than
these noisy winds that puff our sails until they
are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim."

One of the deep ocean-currents that act upon
the Sunday School was the Conference of Ex-
perts and Biblical Scholars held in London on
October 31 and November 1, 1906, under the
aegis of the Sunday School Union. The Con-
ference was of critical importance, and incident-

INTRODUCTION ix

ally made history. It was epoch-marking both by
the intrinsic value of the papers read and the
discussions which followed, and by the circum-
stances in which it met. The former statement
may be verified by a perusal of this volume :
the latter may be confirmed by a brief survey
of the position of the International Lessons ; the
application of scientific methods to the teaching
of the Scriptures; and the conditions of modern
religious education.

For over a generation the International or
Uniform Lesson System has been in operation, and
alike in the United States, Great Britain, and
Canada has won general acceptance. It has met
the needs of average schools with remarkable
success ; and united them in a way that permits of
their organisation for teacher-training, daily Bible
reading, and aggressive missionary effort. But,
more important still, it has made possible the pro-
duction of lesson helps in periodical and book
form through which the flame of spiritual insight
and the colder, but necessary, light of Biblical
scholarship have passed into every Sunday School
class. Where once was a chaos of individual
effort, largely unintelligent, there is now, at any
rate in the progressive schools, a system of
ordered study and endeavour, designed to bring
the young early to a knowledge of the ways
of God with men, and the place of Christ in the
redemption of the world.

x BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

Such results are full of encouragement, but they
do not warrant any complacent sense of finality.
Below the average school is a host not yet
raised to the efficiency which might be theirs
through adopting the International Lessons with
their related helps ; above the average are
many sufficiently advanced and equipped to
demand something more systematic, and putting
greater emphasis upon knowledge of Christian
truth and the history of the Revelation. These
have benefited by the advances made in educa-
tional science and by the gradual spread of the
teachings of Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel;
by the studies in adolescence of the kind carried
on by President Stanley Hall; and by the work
of psychologists like Professor William James.
They are convinced that children of different ages
need not only different methods, but different
presentations of Scripture. Thirty years ago an
International Convention adopted as the founda-
tion of its lesson system the following principles :
1. One lesson for all grades. 2. The Old Testa-
ment and the New Testament to be covered in
equal portions. 3. The course to be completed
in six years. 4. A Temperance Lesson to be
assigned once a quarter. It is doubtful whether
any of the first three principles would be accepted
to-day by schools of the higher type. Hence has
arisen an agitation in the United States which has
led to the formation of the Religious Education

INTRODUCTION xi

Association, and many efforts to construct Lesson
Courses of a more scientific order.

An agitation of a similar, though of a less acute
kind, has been proceeding in this country for the
last ten years. Of late it has become more active
and widespread, and it is evident to careful
observers that in order to conserve the good
accomplished, and to maintain the position of the
International system, certain changes in the
Scheme are inevitable. These have already been
foreshadowed by the action of the American
Section of the Lesson Committee in sanctioning
optional courses for Beginners and Seniors, and
by the acceptance by the British Section of the
Committee of the principle of gradation. These
concessions, feared by some as threatening the very
existence of the Uniform Lesson Scheme, are re-
garded by others as the only means of strengthen-
ing the hold of the system upon the schools and
of increasing its effectiveness.

The application of scientific methods to the
study of the Holy Scriptures, first begun by the
French priest Simon in J680, has given birth to
modern Biblical Criticism Ind produced results to
which the Church can no longer be indifferent.
Do these results concern the Sunday School ?
The answer is less easy than at first sight appears.
It is true that the School must be mainly con-
cerned with the essential truths of Christianity and
that the majority of its scholars are in the stage

xii BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

when intellectual doubt is rarely met with.
But a percentage of the scholars are Seniors who
touch the world of thought through conversation
with their fellows, and through books. These will
have to meet the attacks of unbelievers who are
quick to use the results of Biblical Criticism to
destroy faith in the Scriptures and in Christianity
itself. Must our youth be sent forth ignorant of
what Christian scholarship has accomplished ? And
if it be resolved to keep the classes in our
schools ignorant of critical results, ought teachers
to be left in ignorance ? Here is a situation that
Sunday School leaders must face. It has become
necessary to define clearly what is to be the atti-
tude of teachers to the critical movement, and to
give every possible help to the Church in its
encounter with the unbelief and doubt that
these conditions foster among young men and
women.

Further, the call for a review of existing methods
has been rendered more urgent through the con-
troversy initiated by the Education Act of 1902.
Out of the Sectarian wrangle has emerged the
whole question of the religious instruction of the
young. What are the principles which underlie
religious training ? What part should the Home,
the School, the Church, the State play in Educa-
tion? Should State Education be Denominational,
Undenominational, or Secular? These questions
have been, and are being, hotly debated in England

INTRODUCTION

Xlll

and Wales, and the issue is not yet decided.
Against the secular solution we think the best
instincts of the majority of Christian people in
this country are ranged. They see with anxiety
the spread of wealth, the deepening love of
pleasure, the spread of materialism, the decay
of family worship and of the reading of the Bible,
the alienation of the masses from all the Churches,
and they realise that the nation in these days has
reached a religious crisis.

The very possibility of the exclusion of the Bible
from elementary education, caused by the demands
of Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics for
direct control and a denominational atmosphere
in the day school, has brought the Sunday School
into greater prominence. If the secular view of
education prevail, it is obvious that upon the
Sunday School will fall the chief burden and
responsibility of giving religious instruction to the
young. If such a demand were made upon it, is
the Sunday School ready to meet it ? Has it the
teaching intelligence and force necessary ? Is its
Bible study sufficiently real and thorough to give
the religious training required?

Even though the secularisation of elementary
education be only an evil omen that will never
be fulfilled, nothing but good would accrue from
the bracing up of all Sunday School effort to a
higher efficiency. We can never rest content
with anything short of the best possible; for

xiv BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

institutions that retain their soul must, like every
living organism, follow the law of the life within
them, and grow to the utmost limits of strength
and fruitfulness. Nor is it pressing the analogy
too far to say that if such growth is not visible
it must be that the plant is suffering from causes
which skilful gardeners may remove.

The situation thus rapidly sketched did not
escape the notice of the Sunday School Union.
For more than a century the Society has been a
leader in the religious education of the young,
piloting the studies of teachers through its
numberless publications, laying down courses of
lessons for the schools of the country, and dis-
seminating knowledge of the best teaching
methods and apparatus. Its policy has always
been deeds, not words, and while others have
often been crying aloud for reform, it has been
silently at work cutting the path along which
reform must travel.

In conformity with its best traditions, the
Sunday School Union in 1906 resolved to call a
representative Conference to discuss the Inter-
national Lessons in the frankest manner, and in
the full light of modern needs. The Conference
was to include the principal denominations, well-
known Biblical scholars, and expert Sunday School
workers. It was to meet in circumstances that
permitted of undisturbed and adequate debate;
it was to be private, that all might speak un-

INTRODUCTION xv

reservedly with the candour that open meetings
restrain and chiefly because its work was to advise
the leaders of the Sunday School. Above all,
the subject was to be treated in the broadest way,
being developed from root principles and under
the control of the highest conceptions of Sunday
School life and work. First, " The Primary Aims of
the School " were to be determined ; and the bear-
ing of Modern Biblical Criticism upon Sunday
School Teaching reviewed; next, The Mode of
Teaching the Bible, and The Essential Equipment
of the Teacher were to be discussed ; then were
to come The International Lessons, with their
defects and suggested remedies ; and finally, the
relation of the Sunday School to the Theological
Colleges and to Ministers.

The Conference proved to be as happy in opera-
tion as in conception ; and it is no exaggeration to
say that the gathering was unique hi the history
of British Sunday Schools. Certainly no more
remarkable or representative body of men has ever
come together for a two-days' discussion of the
problems of religious education. Anglicans and
Free Churchmen, ministers and laymen, university
and college professors, Sunday School superinten-
dents, child study experts and practical teachers,
the member of Parliament and the peer of the
realm, representatives from the chief denomi-
national committees for the welfare of youth
all were there, and all attended and took part

xvi BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

in the four prolonged sessions with unflagging
interest. 1

The total results constitute nothing less than
the reconstruction of the teachers' work upon a
new foundation. The vague has become definite ;
and ideas that were more or less in solution have
crystallised into expression. Co-ordination of the
disjointed has been secured and broad principles
affirmed that will regulate and unify Sunday
School effort for many years to come.

First with regard to the Primary Aims of the
Sunday School, it was unanimously agreed that
the emphasis must always be upon the religious
aim, the educational element, however expanded,
being always subordinate to the evangelical. In
the judgment of the Conference, the School is
chiefly a " School " in the sense that it exists to
bring the young to Christ, and to instruct them in
the opportunities and obligations of the Christian
life.

The work of Biblical criticism was recognised
to be inevitable, and its assured results, while
disturbing to men's statements of the truth, were
felt to be in no way subversive of the Evan-
gelical truths which the Sunday School exists to
teach. It was affirmed to be the teacher's duty to
acquaint himself with these results and to have
them in his mind when teaching ; but since they

1 A list of the representatives attending the Conference
will be found on page 151.

INTRODUCTION

xvii

do not in themselves constitute a message nor
affect the substance of the Gospel, they do not
come within the scope of the teaching functions of
the school. A knowledge of the critical processes
and results will be found of service in senior
classes, and there chiefly to answer the difficulties
that thoughtful young people meet as intelligence
expands.

As the discussions proceeded the teacher himself
and the Church life about him became more and
more the central subjects. To train teachers was
perceived to be the key to everything else. The
competent teacher will do good work with any
curriculum or with none, and he is the only teacher
who can work adequately a curriculum of a high
grade. But who is to train him ? The School
can do something by setting the seniors to the
task of teaching under good supervision. Some
day we may have an institution educating super-
intendents to act as teacher-trainers as well as
managers of the school. But, in the majority
of cases, the minister must be the trainer of his
own teachers. He is the inspirer of the Church ;
he knows the spiritual state and intellectual
capacities of the youth of the Church ; he should
be the best-fitted to lead them into Christian ser-
vice and to help them to render it with success.
Obviously the minister himself must have the
knowledge and skill to do this, and here comes the
opportunity of the Theological College. Though

xviii BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

no resolution was passed on this point, it was .felt
strongly that the colleges ought to give greater
prominence to the Sunday School in their curri-
cula, and that steps should be taken to give theo-
logical students a knowledge of psychology and
the art of teaching, and a practical acquaintance
with the best methods of conducting a modern
Sunday School.

With regard to the School curriculum, the Con-
ference unanimously approved of the principle of
grading the lesson material, and advised that three
and possibly four independent courses of lessons
might be provided with advantage. High appre-
ciation was expressed of the incalculable service
rendered to the Church by the International Lesson
system, and a strong desire was expressed to main-
tain the International fellowship. It was felt that
the International Lesson Committee, having already
provided optional graded lessons for the Beginners
and Seniors, might extend this service without in
any way imperilling the future of the "Inter-
national " Lesson as the universal course for the
main School. For the vast majority of Sunday
Schools these three grades will suffice. As a
matter of fact they are demanded by the separa-
tion of the School into three distinct departments,
the Primary, the Main School, and the Institute a
process now going on with increasing rapidity in
every part of the country. Of course this means
a greater demand upon the time of the members

INTRODUCTION xix

of the International Committee and the multiplica-
tion of optional courses. But if the Lesson Com-
mittee will organise itself to meet the new needs
both money and men can be found to discharge
the work.

The Conference thus closed upon a note of
interrogation. It had no legislative functions,
but having registered its decisions in a number
of resolutions, 1 it has submitted them to the
Council of the Sunday School Union and the
International Lesson Committee. A Conference
of both sections of the latter body is to be held
this year in London, when these resolutions will
be discussed. Whatever action may be ultimately
taken, there can be no disguising of the opportunity
offered, nor of the demands made by a new day.
Neither the Sunday School Union nor the Lesson
Committee can afford to ignore the claims now
made upon them. By the experience and labours
of the past they have won the right to construct
the course of Bible Study for the world's Sunday
Schools ; and with faith and courage and an open
mind they may command the confidence of the
new century in the great educational tasks that
confront the peoples. To lead the religious educa-
tion of the world's children is a magnificent ideal
worth making many a sacrifice to realise.

FRANK JOHNSON.

1 These are given on page 183.

xx BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

# % -It may be well to state here that though
the Conference was held under the gis of the
Sunday School Union, and the papers are now
published under their authority, the Society is not
responsible for all the views expressed.

THE PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY

SCHOOL

chief object of our Conference is to
-L consider what is the best way of teaching
the Bible in the Sunday School. It is most fitting
that the discussion should begin by determining
the primary aim of such schools. For that Book
which is a library that Divine library which is
a book may be read and taught in a hundred
different ways ; and we must bear in mind exactly
what Sunday Schools are, and what, consistently
with the necessary conditions of the case, they
I should be made. Some of the statements advanced
I in this paper may possibly be regarded as mere
j truisms, commonplaces unworthy of discussion.

I Yet I submit that in this, as in other departments
of life, axioms change their character when " felt
along our pulses," and whilst to be obliged to
listen to commonplaces may be wearisome, to carry
some of them into practice might mean a revolu-
tion.

2 l

2 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

1. It is, then, not the primary aim of the
Sunday School to teach the Bible from the point
of view of literature. That the book ought to
have supreme influence in the front rank of litera-
ture, the English Bible as an English classic, we
may well believe. Huxley advocated its use in
the London Board Schools on this principle, and
it is as containing important religious history that
the book is studied in many schools. But that
is not the primary object of the Sunday School.

2. Nor is the main object intellectual, the train-
ing of the mind in the highest subjects. That is
not the business of the Church in the first instance.
Religion will improve the intellect of any man
who submits himself to its discipline, and children,
above all, need this kind of mental training. They
will receive it if they are being well educated, and
the teaching of Sunday Schools will contribute
towards this end. But this is not their chief end.
They are schools, but not schools mainly in an
intellectual sense or for an intellectual purpose.

3. The primary aim is not to teach theology.
Happily the Bible is not a book of theology, but
of religion; and if theology be the intellectual
presentation of the subject matter of religion, it
is only one application of the last paragraph to
say that the primary aim is not to teach the
dogmas of a Church. This does not imply, of
course, the neglect of Catechisms or specific
denominational teaching. Such teaching should

PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 3

and will have its due place in Church schools, but
in my opinion it should not form their primary
aim.

4. Nor is that aim to teach ethics. If the
Sunday School does not inculcate a Christian
standard of moral conduct, it may be put down
as a failure ; and if it cannot produce better results
in practice than moral philosophers, by Aristotle's
own confession, have accomplished, it is a pity.
But when an attempt was made some years ago
to teach ethics apart from religion in primary
day schools because of the difference in the
religious opinions of their parents, the failure of
such a proposal pointed to that better method
of moral training which Sunday Schools have it
in their power to carry out.

5. The primary aim of the Sunday School is to
teach religion, to make the children and young
people who are brought under its influence true
Christians. It is not necessary to discuss the
meaning of the last phrase. Some Churches may
hold that the acceptance of their distinctive
doctrinal and ecclesiastical tenets is necessary not
only to the bene esse, but to the esse, the very
existence, of true Christianity. Others may be
satisfied that a belief in the Fatherhood of God,
the imitation of Jesus of Nazareth, and the
brotherhood of man suffices to constitute Christi-
anity, though that is not the Christianity of
history. Others may hold, as I do, a middle

4 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

position and consider that the former communities
claim too much and the latter admit too little,
that Christianity, as it has been understood for
centuries, implies a relation to God in Christ of
a deep and fundamental kind, and that upon this
the character and force of the Christian religion
depend. But religious i.e., for us Christian
education is the primary aim of the Sunday School.
A prominent Cambridge scholar wrote lately:
"By religious education I mean that continual
supply of spiritual food by which a man's will is
strengthened to resist evil within and around him,
and on which the health of his higher life depends."
Children need such food in a form fitted to their
age, and the Sunday School is the one main
source of supply furnished by the Church for
this end.

Still, this may in practice mean almost anything.
It might imply nothing more than goody-goody,
well-meant but uninstructive and unimpressive
exhortation as the staple of Sunday School teach-
ing. In many instances this is all that has been
given the best instruction obtainable, far better
than nothing, often inspired by the influence of
sterling Christian character, but not representing,
even in aim, what Sunday School teaching ought
to be. If religion is to be effective it must
influence heart, intellect, will; I would say the
will through the intellect and the heart. Teaching
directly addressed to heart and will is for the most

PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 5

part out of place in day-schools ; there the intellect
is the primary consideration, the feelings and con-
duct being only indirectly affected. We are
agreed, however, that true religion must be intelli-
gent and that to be rightly taught it must enlist
the highest intelligence available. If, as in some
Churches in the past, this element be neglected,
a Nemesis will assuredly follow. Since the Bible
is a book which in incomparable fashion appeals
to all parts of our nature, the intellectual element
in it must not be omitted, or slighted, at our peril.

6. Now I am particularly asked to answer the
question, What is the relation of the educational
element to the evangelical aim? And I answer
that it is a means to an end ; that it must always
be kept in sight as a necessary means to the
highest end, but never suffered itself to become
an end. The intellectual element in the training
must be encouraged in every way and raised to
its highest power and efficiency, but it should
always be kept in complete subordination to the
primary aim for which Sunday Schools were estab-
lished and for which the Church of Christ exists.
My work this morning, as I understand it, will be
done if I can vindicate to the utmost the claims
of the educational element whilst insisting with
equal strenuousness that it must be strictly sub-
ordinated to that end, to which it forms only an
important means.

What is implied by this in practice ? We must

6 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODEEN METHODS

remember (1) What Sunday Schools actually are ;
(2) the conditions which will always limit their
operations even if reform does its utmost and the
ideals at which many are aiming should one day
be reached. A Sunday School means the gather-
ing of young people of all ages from infants to
adolescents, perhaps adults in Wales grandparents
may be found in the same school with their grand-
children. These aggregations of young people are
often not graded, as they should be, into infant
schools, main schools, and adult classes. Then
be it remembered that for some thirty or forty
minutes at most a lesson has to be given, perhaps
amidst the clamour of other classes, too seldom
with the advantage of a private room. The lesson
consists presumably of an exposition of a few
verses of Scripture, but in any case it must be
such as can be appropriately given under these
conditions. Not that existing conditions cannot
be improved ; they ought to be improved, they
must be improved if Sunday Schools are to do
for the twentieth century what they have done
for the nineteenth; and we are here to help to
improve them. But as practical men we know
the limits beyond which it is hopeless for us to
expect to pass for some time to come, and our
suggestions will be limited accordingly.

It would appear, however, that the measure of
intellectual training which is necessary for the
teaching of religion cannot be given unless there

PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 7

is at least an approximate grading of those who
are taught. Intellect differentiates. It is im-
possible to answer the question, How may the
educational element in our schools best be made
to minister to the primary spiritual end of training
the children? till we know who the children are.
Are they babies sent to be out of the way of
the parents on Sunday afternoons, or are they
youths better educated than most Sunday School
teachers, or young women who know their Bibles
quite as well as many clergymen and ministers?
There is only one religion for all ages, but it is
the merest truism to say that if it is to be taught
there must be an intellectual presentation of it,
and if that is to be rightly given it must vary
with age and attainments. It is little short of
absurd to generalise concerning Sunday Schools
as a whole when the word is made to cover such
an indefinite variety of meanings. The kind of
mental training which would conduce to the great
spiritual end in one case would be positively
mischievous in another.

7. This obvious principle needs to be emphasised
when we consider that the text-book in the schools
is the Bible. Every one knows what serious
changes in the mode of regarding and studying
the Bible have come to pass in the last thirty
or forty years. These should neither be over-
rated nor underrated. They are in any case very
significant and to many of us very full of hope.

8 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODEKN METHODS

I may for a moment illustrate by taking the three
standard Bible dictionaries Dr. Smith's, of 1863,
modified in 1893 ; Dr. Hastings' in 1898-1903, and
the "Encyclopaedia Biblica" contemporary with
it. If it may be assumed, simply for argument's
sake, that Hastings' Dictionary represents the
opinions of the best educated teachers in England
to-day, that implies a momentous change from
the views of the same class forty years ago. The
question as to how far this does, or should,
influence Sunday School teaching is assigned to
others, and I will be very careful not to trespass
on their province. But it concerns the subject
allotted to me in this way. I hold that all the
questions raised by Biblical criticism must, so far
as Sunday Schools are concerned, be kept in
absolute subordination to the primary aim of
teaching the Christian religion and making the
young people true Christians. The principle
applies equally to the most old-fashioned, con-
servative traditionalist and to the youngest and
most eager representative of the new lights, who
is quite sure that all wisdom dwells with him.
These questions are important in their place, but
the children do not come to the school to learn
the chronology of the Old Testament, nor whether
the Law came before or after the prophets, nor
how the Synoptic Gospels are related to one
another, nor how the narrative of the Acts may
be harmonised with St. Paul's Epistles. Questions

PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 9

on these and similar subjects may not improbably
be asked in some classes, and it is well if the
teacher can answer them. When no questions
are likely to be asked he will deal with such
topics according to the best light he has and the
grade of class he is teaching. But all historical
and literary information given in Sunday School
classes, whether on traditional or critical lines,
should be strictly kept in its own place, entirely
subordinate to the primary aim of making
the children inteUigent, earnest, whole-hearted
Christians.

8. It is not intended by the frequent insistence
upon the end to imply that the means adapted to
reach it are unimportant. It is with these, indeed,
that this Conference is chiefly concerned. But it
appears to me that if agreement be reached as to
the primary aim of the schools, and if what may
appear a mere commonplace or axiomatic state-
ment be taken as a working and ruling principle,
that many details of discussion will settle them-
selves. For example, these amongst other corol-
laries would follow its acceptance :

(a) It is not necessary to teach the whole Bible
in the Sunday School. One chief difficulty of the
framers of the International Lessons has been that
in attempting to cover the whole field, the scheme
has extended over so long a period as to fall
through by its own weight. None the less

(b) AH parts of the Bible may be utilised in

10 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

order to make the teaching of the Christian religion
effective and complete. If the Bible is the record
of God's manifestation of Himself along a line
of revelation which culminates in His Son Jesus
Christ our Lord, every portion of Scripture may be
used to illustrate and support this main theme.
But

(c) Christ and His religion must be supreme, and
the primary aim should never be lost sight of in the
attempt to make Biblical knowlege more complete,
or the intellectual results more scientifically accu-
rate and systematic. The Gospels will form the
central feature, both in the sense that they will
be read more frequently than other portions,
and that in choosing lessons from the Law, the
Histories, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the re-
mainder of the New Testament, the teaching of
the Christian religion as such, and in its present-day
aspects, will be paramount still.

(d) The Bible being, as we know it is, a vast
treasure-house, comprising very various contents,
all its modes of teaching must be employed, if it
is viewed as the text-book of our religion; but
especially those that are suited to the child's mind,

e-g->

Biography: Children need stories, stories, and

again stories. Especially the Story of all
others.

History : Which teaches on the larger scale, as
biography does from the individual life.

PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 11

Prophecy: Not expounded in a mechanical
fashion which makes every verse point
directly to Christ ; but as an enthusiastic
unfolding of the myriad ways in which
the seers of old time prepared the way
for the greatest Prophet that ever lived.

Psalms : As God's Word sung, another element
in the progressive revelation of God to His
people and the progressive knowledge which
His people gained of God here expressed
in the glowing, soul-subduing language of
poetry.

Wisdom Literature: As illustrating religion on
the human side, the inculcation of major
and minor morals, all under the domi-
nating influence of a religion which is
only complete in Christ.

Chronology, Geography, and kindred studies
called secular, may be made to minister
to the teaching of religion.

Doctrine as unfolded in the Epistles will not
be dry when the children are shown how in
all its parts it carries on, and carries out, the
message and purpose of Christ the Saviour.
Whilst none can say that imagination is for-
gotten, or has no part in religious teaching,
with a text-book before him which contains
on the one hand the parables of Jesus, and
on the other the book of Job, the visions of
Daniel and the mystic splendours of the
Apocalypse.

12 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

I am convinced that a thorough carrying out in
practice of the primary aim which we all hi theory
accept would relieve us of no small proportion of
our difficulties, if it did not solve the whole Sunday
School problem. The teacher, like the minister
when ordained to his sacred and closely kindred
work, is bidden to " draw all his cares and studies
this way " ; and he will find that every God-
breathed Scripture is profitable for teaching, for re-
proof, for correction in error, for instruction in
right-doing, so that each child under training may
become, like the man of God, himself complete and
in due course completely equipped for every good
work.

W. T. DAVISON.

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND ITS

BEARING UPON SUNDAY SCHOOL

TEACHING

I. THE OLD TESTAMENT

IT is often said, and truly, that the bulk of Old
Testament " scholarship " in this and other
countries is on the side, not only of " Higher
Criticism " (for no sensible person will dream of
denying that criticism, both "lower" and "higher,"
has its legitimate place), but also of the special
"results" which are commonly held to flow from
the application of that criticism, especially in the
Old Testament. These results, in their main
features, are held to be " assured," and it is re-
garded as a mark of plain prejudice, or ignorance,
or something worse, to entertain any doubt of
them, or oppose their acceptance. But, if they
are " assured," it will very naturally be asked, Why
should they not be taught ? No one now hesitates
to admit that the earth goes round the sun, instead

13

14 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

of the sun round the earth, as was so long believed;
or that the earth, as geology proves, is vastly older
than the six thousand years which the old chronology
assigned to it. He would be a very blameworthy
person who concealed these facts, or, in a Sunday
School, or anywhere else, taught in a way contrary
to them. If, therefore, certain things are now
" established " with regard to the structure and
character of the Old Testament, why should
they not also be taught in our Sunday Schools
and pulpits? Nay, is it not our plain duty to
make them known as early and as widely as we
can?

I entirely agree that, if these things are scienti-
fically established, it is our duty to make them
known, though it might even then be a question
whether the Sunday School is ordinarily the right
place for such tuition. The story of Joseph will
always be the story of Joseph to our children ; the
narratives of the call of Samuel, of David and
Goliath, of Daniel and the lion's den, will retain
their perennial charm for their minds; the teach-
ings of the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the Prophets
will always be an inspiration to faith and goodness ;
and no good would be done, but a great deal would
be lost, by complicating the simple, direct impres-
sion of these passages by instruction about J and
E and P, or other questions of date or authorship.
It is a graver question how far the main " results "
of this criticism, or what are assumed to be such,

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 15

should be taught to our advanced Sunday School
classes, or to the young men and women in our
Bible-classes, guilds, Christian Endeavour meetings,
and the like. I leave out of view the day school
and the pulpit, though obviously the same question
arises there.

On this point, facts have to be faced. In every
case much will depend on the personal conviction,
and, above all, on the wisdom and good sense, of
the teacher, as to what he will feel it his duty to
say on any particular lesson. I assume that such
a teacher is, to begin with, a believer in the fact
of a Divine revelation to Israel and in Christ, and
that he is sincerely loyal to that conviction in his
teaching in his class. If he is not, he should not
be there. This is not a question of criticism, but
of ultimate religious attitude. If a teacher, e.g.,
uses his position to destroy the faith of his pupils
in, say, the Resurrection of Christ ; or, with Pro-
fessor Foster, of Chicago, in a book I have just
been reading on " The Finality of the Christian
Religion," declares that an intelligent man in these
days cannot believe in any miracles, I have no
hesitation in saying that the managers of a Sunday
School will do well, as speedily and as courteously
as possible, to dispense with his services. But
suppose such a teacher to be a devout, believing
man, yet to be intelligently convinced of the truth
of certain views in criticism, say, of the composite
nature of the Pentateuch, of .the exilian origin of

16 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

the latter part of Isaiah, or of the post-Mosaic date
of some of the Levitical laws, it will be difficult
to maintain that he should absolutely suppress his
honestly-held beliefs in speaking on these subjects,
any more than it can be expected of a man who
does not hold these opinions that he should be
silent as to his disbelief in them.

This much at least I will say, that I think the
time is past for refraining from giving our intelli-
gent scholars I would add, our Christian people
some fair idea of what these supposed results of
criticism are. This can be done without unduly
influencing opinion one way or the other, though
possibly the expression of personal conviction
cannot altogether be avoided. In any case, it
ought wisely, and without undue dogmatism, to
be done, for the simple reason, if for no other, that
these things are there, that people are hearing,
reading, and thinking about them, and that more
harm is likely to accrue to the young mind from
being left in ignorance of them than from hearing
them reverently and intelligently explained.

I hope it will be evident that I do not desire to
take up any extreme or obscurantist position on
this matter, and the members of the conference
will bear with me if I now say a few things with
which some of them, at least, are not likely to
agree. I desire, first, to recognise, with all my
heart, that there is criticism and criticism, and that
it is possible to place many of the results of criticism

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 17

in so mild a light that they may with justice be
regarded as perfectly innocuous. There is, if I
may be pardoned the expression, a " sugar-coated "
mode of presenting the results of the modern
criticism which in no way conveys a full idea of
what it means or effects in the hands of its leading
and more outspoken representatives.

In merely literary questions of date and author-
ship there must always be wide scope for difference
of opinion. It is not of itself of vital moment
whether the Pentateuch is a single work, or is
composed of three or more documents. If these
documents are themselves of good, trustworthy
quality, they may even, as in the case of the Four
Gospels, strengthen faith by furnishing us with a
three-fold or four-fold witness, instead of a single
one. The general soundness of the patriarchal
tradition may be admitted, though it is held that
in certain of its features it receives an idealisation
or interpretation from later times. It may be
believed that Moses gave laws to Israel, though
the final collection or codification of the priestly
laws may be thought to be later : in their last form
perhaps as late as Ezra.

I should say that I myself regard many of the
things assumed as "results" under these heads as
extremely doubtful. I do not believe, e.g. 9 that
sound grounds exist for a separation such as the
critics make between their J and E documents.

I do not believe that these, especially the so-called

3

18 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

E, ever existed as separate documents at all; still
less am I convinced of the late date or separate
existence of the document called P. I am as
certain as I am of anything on this earth that it
never did so exist. I do not believe that Deu-
teronomy first saw the light in the reign of Josiah,
or is a production of that age, but hold it to be,
in accordance with its own witness, substantially
as least, a Mosaic book. I have not time to discuss
these questions here, nor do I desire to do so, and
I ask no one to accept any opinion on my ipse
diocit. But I mention these as matters on which,
like the dates of portions of Isaiah, discussion is
fairly open, and only protest against them being
regarded as matters on which criticism has said
its last word.

But I must now repeat that the case is vastly
understated when it is represented that questions
like these represent the total scope and spirit of
that modern critical movement which, like a great
wave, has swept over the field of the Old Testa-
ment during the last quarter of a century, and
created such well-grounded anxiety in the breasts
of earnest lovers of the Bible everywhere. It is
hopeless to attempt to minimise the seriousness
of this movement. The results of it are only
now beginning to be fully apparent when its
principles and methods are being carried into
the sphere of the New Testament, with effects
disastrous to the Gospels, and subversive of the

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 19

great facts on which our Christian faith is founded.
It is not a matter on the surface at all, or that
deals only with innocent questions of age and
authorship. It goes down to the foundations
of our faith in the Biblical revelation.

I am told I ought to take my opinion of it
from the " moderate " men. But I prefer, very
naturally, to go, in the first instance, to the "re-
presentative " men ; to the men who originated
the movement, and to whose works the moderate
men themselves habitually refer us for full informa-
tion regarding it. And what I find there con-
vinces me that this scheme of criticism, whether
adopted and advocated by believing men or not,
is one which the Christian Church can never take
to its bosom, in the Sunday School or anywhere
else, as compatible with an earnest and believing
use of the Bible as God's holy Word. It is a
scheme anti-supernaturalistic in its root ; inverting
the Bible's whole account of Israel's history, laws,
and institutions ; re-constructing that history on
lines of natural evolution; dismissing as legend
the patriarchal period (Mr. Addis, in his recent
book on " Hebrew Religion," has not room for
even so much as a mention of it) ; " wiping out,"
to use a phrase of Duhm's, the Mosaic period ;
treating Joshua as a " romance " ; denying, of
course, all miracles ; robbing Samuel and David
of the more exalted traits with which "theocratic"
narrators invest them; making the most charac-

20 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

teristic institutions of the priestly law post-exilian
inventions.

I speak with all respect, even with love, of some
of the excellent men and able scholars who feel
it their duty to accept these theories ; but I
decline to shut my eyes, in any irenical interest,
to what they really mean, or to the peril they
involve. We speak of teaching these things in
our Sunday Schools. I dare to say, with full
sense of responsibility, that if many of the things
which are found in our approved text-books on
this subject were openly and undisguisedly preached
in our pulpits next Lord's Day throughout the
land, there would be nothing less than a revolution
in the Churches. The Christian people simply
would not stand them.

I am not really in spirit an alarmist, or anything
of the sort, and only a strong sense of conviction
leads me to write these strong words. If they
are thought too strong, the Conference must
pardon me. I shall be told, as I have often been,
that I have no right to drag in imagined conse-
quences ; the only question is, What is the truth ?
But people must be allowed to guide themselves
by a modicum of common-sense. From a Fiscal
Controversy downwards, no sane man wilfully
closes his eyes to the consequences of his theories
and actions. If these are serious, they furnish
at least a reason for the most searching examina-
tion of the grounds on which he is called to believe

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 21

or act. If the theories work out harmfully, he
will probably think that a good reason for doubting
if they accord with the truth of things. In any
case, this is no mere intellectual or academic
inquiry. The Christian man wants to be sure
he is not parting with anything vital to his
religious faith and hope.

Am I altogether alone in believing that great
peril attaches to these theories, which have found
so much acceptance, or that they need, in the
interests of science itself, to be reconsidered and
recast from their very foundations ? By no means.
I could name to you, were this the place, very
many scholars some of them sufficiently eminent
far more, indeed, than many suppose, who
entirely share these convictions. And are the
theories themselves settled beyond ah 1 reasonable
dispute? It would be easy to show that they
are not.

Take, in closing, only two illustrations one
from the Old Testament, the other from the New.
I have on my table before me two papers, both
German, bearing on this very subject. One is
an address delivered a few months ago at a con-
ference at Eisenach by no less distinguished a
personage than the learned Orientalist Hugo
Winckler. And what is it ? A root and branch
attack on the presuppositions of the Wellhausen
theory of history and religion, including the post-
exilian origin of the Levitical law, which we are

22 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

commonly asked to accept among the "assured
results." The other is a pamphlet of the Ritschlian
professor, Julius Kaftan, of Berlin, in which he
deals equally drastically with the modern "his-
torical-critical " theories of Jesus and Paul. These
theories are said to be the results of the application
of the scientific historical method. " No," Kaftan
says, with deep truth, "they have their roots
in other soil altogether than that of method. It
is, in brief, the so-called ' modern view of the
world ' that lies behind them " a view that brings
everything within the limits of unbroken causal
connection. And he closes his searching examina-
tion with the words : "I conclude, therefore, that
this ' Jesus religion ' is a thing without roots. As
it has points of support neither in the Gospel of
Jesus, nor in primitive Christianity, so it will
never approve itself, not to-day and not in the
future, as a possible form of Christianity."

I say amen to these words of the Ritschlian
prophet, and would apply them, with little change,
to the theories of the " historical-religious " criti-
cism of the Old Testament. I advise, therefore,
that the teacher think once, twice, even thrice,
before introducing these modern critical theories
into his Sunday School.

JAMES ORR.

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 23

II. THE NEW TESTAMENT

The postulate with which I start is, that the
teacher in a Sunday School is not to give any
results of criticism which might discredit the Bible.
His object is to make the children realise the
uniqueness and the authority of the Book, and
any line of teaching which might prejudice the
child's mind against it would obviously be out of
place. Thus the teacher cannot safely use the
"Encyclopaedia Biblica," where the extreme and
unsustained speculations of critics are given with-
out correction. It would be cruel* for example, to
teach a child Schmiedel's view of the Gospel
narratives ; for a child would naturally infer from
it that nothing is known of our Lord's life except
a few of the most unimportant of His utterances.
Equally cruel would it be to teach a child Van
Manen's view of the Pauline letters, for that would
give the impression that we have no genuine
Epistles of St. Paul, and so would remove the
first line of literary defence of the Christian
verities.

But when we have agreed that the extremes and
extravagances of criticism are not suitable for the

24 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

instruction of children, we are still faced with the
question : Whether there are not assured results of
criticism which may give even to children a truer
and richer view of the New Testament ? It is
generally admitted that the critical handling of the
Old Testament has increased the interest, and even
strengthened the authority, of those writings by
giving to the Prophets their proper place ; by
resolving the moral difficulties of the historical
narratives ; and by showing the gradual develop-
ment of the Mosaic Law. Now, are there results
equally ascertained and equally serviceable in the
criticism of the New Testament ? I think there
are. And though it will not be possible to cover
the ground, three of these results may be selected
to illustrate the line which efficient teachers ought
to take.

First of all, there is the advantage to be gained
by a proper chronological arrangement of the New
Testament books.

Secondly, there is the solution of some out-
standing difficulties secured by the literary analysis
of the books.

And, thirdly, there is the light to be shed upon
the New Testament, from the study of Biblical
theology, that is to say, the recognition that each
writer in the New Testament has a certain
theological venue of his own.

1. The chronological arrangement of the books.

The order suggested, for example, by Dr. Moffat

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 25

in his "Historical New Testament" sheds an
immediate and much-needed light on the whole
of the New Testament literature. There may be
disputed points in that brilliant work, as, for
example, the date of James, or of the Pastoral
Epistles, but the general effect of the re-arrange-
ment is to bring out the real lines of defence for
the historicity of Christianity.

First of all come the undisputed Epistles of
St. Paul. These are followed by the synoptic
narratives in the order, Mark, Matthew, and Luke,
but the Epistle of the Hebrews follows on
Matthew, and indicates the connection between
the old order and the new, and the Acts of the
Apostles follows immediately on Luke, showing
the two treatises together, which should never be
divided. Then, leaving out of account the smaller
writings of more doubtful date, the New Testament
closes with the Johannine literature, Revelation,
the Gospel of John, and the three Epistles of
John.

Any one who has studied the New Testament in
this order, learning to recognise that the earliest
historical testimony is that of the contemporary
Paul, learning also to see how the Gospel narrative
develops in the hands of the early writers into the
spiritual and mystical interpretation of John, has
obtained a grasp of the New Testament of a kind
which cannot be secured so long as the books are
arranged in the accidental and uncritical order of

26 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

the canon. Certainly any intelligent teacher
would be able to understand and appreciate
this result of criticism, and in proportion as he
understood it he would give new life and interest
to the New Testament literature, as he taught it,
even to a child.

2. The solution of difficulties resulting from a

\J tJU O t/

correct literary analysis.

There is no time to do more than give a single
instance of the kind of help which literary analysis
may bring to the interpretation of the New
Testament. In the Apocalyptic discourse of our
Lord, especially as it is recorded in Matthew xxiv.,
there is a difficulty which every reader must have
felt, but which has never been removed nor is it
capable of being removed, until the principles of
literary criticism are applied to the passage. The
difficulty is, that to all appearance our Lord
declares that His Second Advent and the end
of the world would happen within the generation
that was living when He spoke. The many
harmonistic devices which have been employed to
remove this difficulty are unsatisfactory, and some
of them are an insult to the intelligence even of a
child. But when literary analysis is applied to the
passage the difficulty almost disappears. It is
comparatively easy to unravel two threads of
discourse which by the Evangelist have been
heedlessly twisted together.

There was a prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem

MODEEN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 27

and the end of the Jewish economy which our
Lord evidently uttered as He left the Temple for
the last time. There were also prophecies of His
Second Advent and of the final judgment which
He uttered then, or at other times. When these
two threads are separated, and it is a task which,
when once attempted, is found to be comparatively
simple, it becomes plain that the saying, "This
generation shall not pass away till all these things
be fulfilled," belongs to the prophecy of the fall of
Jerusalem, while the saying unfortunately blended
with it that " even the Lord Himself did not know
the day or the hour," belongs to the prophecy of
the final judgment. The difficulty so clearly
resolved by attention to the literary structure can
only be satisfactorily removed from the minds of
children by accustoming them to read the Bible
with the intelligence awake, and with such allow-
ances as are needed in reading any ancient
document.

3. The Biblical theology of the New Testament.

Modern as the idea is, every one who has
applied it to the Bible has learned the assistance
that it brings to a full appreciation of the New
Testament writings. Biblical theology has taught
us to see that we have first a Pauline theology;
secondly, what we may call a Synoptic theology ;
and thirdly, a Johannine theology ; contributing
elements to the interpretation of the facts of the
Christian revelation.

28 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

The Pauline theology is contained in the un-
disputed Epistles of St. Paul. It reveals itself
also in the Pastoral Epistles, the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and 1 Peter. In the opinion of some
modern writers, the Pauline theology has been the
dominant factor in the making of Christianity ; but
powerful as it is, it is balanced, and we may say
modified, by the Synoptic theology, or the ideas
of Jesus as they survived in the oral and written
traditions of the first generation.

Then the Pauline theology and the Synoptic
theology are supplemented and completed by the
Johannine theology of Revelation, the Fourth
Gospel, and the Epistles of John. A careful
student of the New Testament is seldom inclined
to pit these theological positions one against
another. It is by distinguishing them and then
by combining them that a full and rich view is
obtained of the contents of the Gospel. This
study is not beyond the power of an ordinarily
educated teacher, and the results of the study
upon an intelligent child are likely to be far
reaching.

Now it may be said that even these three lines
of critical inquiry would tax unduly the ordinary
Sunday School teacher. If that be so, it should be
the task of those who teach the teachers, and
especially of the Sunday School Union, to put
these results, and results such as these, plainly and
convincingly before teachers ; for it must be

MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM 29

recognised that criticism in these ways is becoming
the surest apologist of the historic Gospel; and
while the New Testament as dogmatically handled
has lost ground, critically handled by those who
combine reverence with criticism, it will recover
its position and gain in interest and in authority.

R. F. HORTON.

THE METHOD OF TEACHING THE

BIBLE

I. THE SCIENTIFIC v. THE
HAPHAZARD

T TNLESS one is much mistaken there is a
v_y growing demand on the part of teachers
and parents for some guidance in the best way
to make the Bible intelligible to their scholars
and children. Young people are growing up into
a totally different mental atmosphere from that in
which our childhood was spent. They will learn
the history of the past and the facts of the present
in a new way, and that way is, more or less, in
every subject the method of orderly science.

To find out the truth about anything, they are
to find out first how it came to be what it is.
Nothing escapes this mental attitude. It would
be, in my humble opinion, a betrayal of the
highest interests of the young if the Church in all
its branches does not come forward and offer the
truest guidance which its own knowledge allows it

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 31

to give. There is a line of Milton somewhat to
the point :

"Commission from above
We have received, to answer the desire
Of knowledge within bounds."

The bounds of knowledge are relative to each
age of Christian culture, and we can only offer to
the world what our scholarship allows us to offer.

This paper, then, is an attempt to go to the root
of the haphazard methods of teaching and present-
ing the Bible material and to show :

(1) That we have in a revered and honoured
past, sound precedent for superseding incoherent
methods by a scientific one.

(2) To give in briefest outline a proposed scheme.

(3) To indicate certain advantages which may
reasonably be expected to follow its adoption.

(1) The precedent to which I draw attention
first is familiar to those who know the history of
the English Bible since that period of enlightened
reform the Renaissance and the Reformation.

One quotation from William Tyndale will be
sufficient for our purpose. Speaking of the school
of divines who then held the field, he said :
" They divide Scripture into four senses the
literal, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical
the literal sense has become nothing at all. . . .
Twenty doctors expound one text twenty
ways, and with an antitheme of half an

32 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

inch some of them draw a thread nine days
long. . . . They not only say that the literal
sense profiteth nothing, but also that it is hurtful
and noisome and killeth the soul. And this they
prove by a text of Paul (2 Cor. iii.) : ' Lo ! say
they, the literal sense killeth, the spiritual sense
giveth life.' "

Thus Tyndale begins his crusade for the open
Bible.

He had on his side great scholars like Colet and
Erasmus. Erasmus' desire is well known : Colet
is best remembered in the story of the visit paid
him one winter night. A priest came in, an
attender at Colet's lectures, and together they sat
down by the fire and talked weather. At last
the visitor summoned up courage and drew from
his bosom a little book, and explained that in it
he had written out the Epistle of St. Paul. Colet
at once loved him for loving St. Paul, and said:
"Open your book, and we will see how many
golden truths we can gather from the first chapter
only of the Epistle to the Romans."

This is just an Distance of the policy of these
early reformers. Their contention was that the
method of presenting the Bible then in vogue
made it the least understood of all books. If
it could be brought into the light of day men
would read it and understand.

So it happened. The era of reading the Bible
set in ; " England became the country of one

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 33

book, and that book the Bible." Every one read
it, or had it read to them. The scientific method
of the schoolmen was cast into the limbo of for-
getfulness, and every man had his own way with
the book.

But one observes that the result was not as
satisfactory as had been expected. It was dis-
covered, as things settled down after the Puritan
revolution, that some kind of guidance was after
all necessary, if the Holy Scripture was to remain
an authority for faith and morals. A most in-
structive situation, I apprehend, and inevitable.
Certainly the scholarship of the age responded to
the call and the Bible came again under a system,
which made it inteUigible.

It is this system that has remained victorious
ever since. In a popular and practical sense it is
represented by the Reference Bible. There are
Ussher's dates : the world was created B.C. 4004.
There are the terse scholarly headings to the
chapters and sections. Christ speaks everywhere.
Abraham is blessed with a promise of His coming.
His Word is in the Psalmist and in Isaiah.
Ezekiel is occupied with the cedar of the Gospel,
and in the Song of Solomon Christ setteth forth
the grace of the Church.

One observes in this that the Bible settles into
position for the schoolmaster under a scheme of
divinity : a unity is brought into its pages, and a
reader may open them haphazard, to find himself

34 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

certainly in the presence of Christ. It was an
honest attempt to introduce order when the
popular mind was going astray: it was as honest
an attempt as that of the schoolmen before them,
and both aimed at the same goal to make the
Bible intelligible.

Yet for all their honesty, and all their theological
acumen, their system has only become the hap-
hazard method of a new age of Christian culture.
Once more it has happened that the scientific order
of one period breaks down in face of a new
world.

Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, was perhaps the first to

prove that the Bible could be made intelligible

to boys on other principle of interpretation. From

his day to this, this kind of teaching set in, and we

are familiar with it. It has been a time of Bible

reading, just as it was when Erasmus praised

Folly and Colet lectured. I often think that

Green's well-known description of those days

applies even more truly to the nineteenth century:

"Legends and annals, war-song and psahn,

state-rolls and biography, the mighty voices of the

prophets, the parables of Evangelists, stories of

mission journeys, of perils by sea and among the

heathen, philosophic arguments, apocalyptic visions,

all were thrown broadcast."

Surely this is a description of the Bible in a
very nineteenth century manner. For two
generations we have been taught that the Bible

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 35

is a living book. We have read " The Land of the
Book," Stanley; "Sinai and Palestine"; Farrar's
"Life of Christ," and then Geikie's. Teachers
have been assured that they must be obtuse
beyond redemption if, with books like these in
their hands, they could give a dull lesson.

The question is whether this kind of teaching
has not run its course. Has it not illuminated
without making any profound change ? Certainly
the old scheme of prophecies and types has been
broken through, but still the old scholarship holds
sway.

If we take any syllabus for examination we
find that the implied order, both in point of time
and of spiritual importance, is that which has been
dominant for three hundred years. The children
of a Standard 1 are taught an outline of the Book
of Genesis, with an exact knowledge of the time
of Abraham. After similar feats of scholarship,
in the 7th Standard they recapitulate lives of
Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul,
David and Daniel. In a Sunday School the
afternoons for a year are taken up in lessons from
Genesis i. to Judges vii. The Boys' Brigade are
ordered to read daily Daniel, then Philippians,
then St. Matthew and Leviticus, and pass from
Numbers to St. John. Church Sunday School
teachers may be examined if they are advanced
in the lives of Jacob and Joseph with St. John
xi.-xxi., whilst if they care for honours they

36 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

may be tested in a general knowledge of the
Bible.

I need not quote further instances, but wish
to point out that in all this madness there is
method, and until you strike a blow at the method
the madness will drive more and more people
to the madhouse. It is the method of a past
age of Christian culture, the age of the Reference
Bible and its body of divinity.

To use it is to teach in haphazard fashion.
Teach with as vivid an Eastern imagination as you
can engender by a visit to Palestine under twelve
tribes of lecturers, teach it, with as spiritual an insight
as a Maurice, yet your teaching will be vitiated
by the theory that the Bible can be taken as it
stands, and that, taken so, you are showing the
young what really happened, and are telling the
truth.

Has not the time come when, in the interest of
the authority of the Bible, the appeal made in the
seventeenth century should be repeated? May
not we ask of the Christian scholarship of our time
how best to bring order to the Scriptures, and to
our interpretation of them ?

For more than a century men of notable piety
and uprightness have investigated Biblical problems,
it is not unlikely that the authority of the sacred
Book will be reinstated by appealing to their
labours. At any rate an orderly scheme is now
before the Church, and to it I now ask attention.

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 37

2. THE SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT OF HOLY

SCRIPTURE.

(a) The New Testament. Since the Bible
contains a record of the revelation of God, that
which comes last in order of development, is
first in order of use for the immediate purpose
of teaching. The Revelation culminates in
Christ. The first essential is so to arrange the
New Testament literature that there can be no
mistake as to what is revealed.

Two methods are suggested, and in point of view
of scientific arrangement one is as good as the
other. The first suggestion is that the old idea
of harmonising the Gospels should be abandoned,
and as a foundation, the Gospel of St. Mark should
be used as authentic for the life of Christ. Then
parts of St. Luke and St. Matthew give the
teaching, and the Epistles of St. Paul and the
Gospel of St. John come in to show the more
mature faith.

Or it has been proposed that the New Testa-
ment should be arranged as a record of religious
experience ; the documents being used to illustrate
the manifold growth of faith in Christ. Promi-
nence would then be given to the belief, character
and mission of the primitive Church, rather than
to the historic personality of the Saviour.

But I hardly think that the New Testament is
as great a victim to haphazard legerdemain as the

38 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

Old, and certainly it is in connection with the
older Testament that the call for settlement is
strongest.

(b) The Old Testament. It is then to be
suggested that we boldly and consistently declare
that the Old Testament is a record of the rise,
growth, and meridian splendour of the religion
of Israel. There are in this development distinct
stages, separate not merely in time, but in their
idea of God and of morality.

The Old Testament is not of the same spiritual
value in all its parts, and could not be, to be true.

The stages are (1) Pre-Mosaic religion; (2)
Mosaic religion to Amos ; (3) Pre-exilic prophecy
and history ; (4) Post-exilic prophecy and history.

First there are dim traditions of a pre-Mosaic
religion. Much of this is conjecture, and can
only be constructed from survivals of custom and
ritual to the next age, so that it may safely be
left on one side.

The second stage is clearly marked. Beginning
with Moses, "the great kadi of the wilderness,"
as he has been called, and reaching forward to the
age of Amos, it contains the account of all that
travail of soul through which Jehovah became
Lord. Great care is needed hi interpreting this
period. It is an age of primitive ideas, manifold
idolatry, and superstitious custom. It records,
indeed, many an immortal story of heroes like
Jonathan, and a Solomon appears upon the stage

METHOD OP TEACHING THE BIBLE 39

in barbaric splendour. Yet it is not the part best
suited to train the young in that knowledge of
God which leads to Christianity. He is at most
the national helper : the war God : He is always
on Israel's side. He is worshipped under the form
of graven images. The serpent which Moses made
lasts down to the times of Hezekiah. On the
side of conduct, strange things are seen. Deborah
praises Jael's treachery, and David treats his
prisoners of war with horrible cruelty.

No one need deny that there was a strain of
higher piety and a nobler ideal of justice struggling
to find expression, but it had not reached to a
commanding position, nor the clearness of a reve-
lation of the true God.

It is when we pass to the next stage that we
reach the pivot of a scientific method, the era
covered by the writings of the prophets.

It plainly falls into two parts, the pre-exilic
and the post-exilic literature and history. Here
we have the wonderful unfolding of the name
and power of the Alone God, Lord of heaven
and earth, God of Gods and King of every
country. There is the story of mighty empires, the
life-work of spiritual men of heroic mould, the
fall and rise of city states, the formation of a
Church and its matchless book of praise and
prayer, the idea of law humane and just clothed
with majesty : the schoolmaster abroad the wise
trainer of youth and a few specimens reach us

40 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

of speculative thought in which human effort and
prayer press very near the secrets still kept by the
Most High.

The 'more one studies this part of Scripture
the more is one convinced that through them
came almost everything that is of permanent value
in the Old Testament for theology, or life. It
is not that there are no limitations one would
be a Jew to say so but that they lie in direct
approach to the full light of the Saviour.

As a primary source of theological science, the
prophets and their disciples stand unchallenged.
Dr. W. Newton Clarke, in speaking of the use
of the Scriptures in theology, gives a high place
to them :

" We read in the Old Testament the history
of religion. We find realistic pictures of ethical
and religious life all along the way, and see how
men thought of God from stage to stage of their
advancing life. We find in the older books the
thought of God growing finer and truer up towards
Christ, until at length a prophet, adding to the
thought of physical transcendence the vision of
moral beauty, can say: 'Thus saith the High and
lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, Whose name
is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place, with
him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to
secure the spirit of the humble, and to restore the
heart of the contrite one. For I will not contend
for ever, neither will I be always wroth, for the

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 41

spirit would fail before Me, and the souls which
I have made. ' "

Dr. A. B. Davidson writes : " The loftiest
thoughts of God expressed in Scripture are found
in Job and Deutero-Isaiah." Dr. Kautzsch, in his
exhaustive survey of the Religion of Israel, relies
on the period for his greatest results.

When we turn to writers on the ethics of the
Bible the testimony is similar. The genesis of the
social conscience which the American, Professor
Nash, has so splendidly elucidated, is in the
prophetic consciousness. That, he implies, which
is best in the newest of Western races is rooted
in and still may be nourished by contact with
the prophetic passion for civic righteousness as
part of the very service of God.

One is reminded of Lord Acton's great saying :
"A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of
Socrates, a few lines that were inscribed on an
Indian rock before the Second Punic War, the
footsteps of a silent yet prophetic people who
dwelt by the Dead Sea and perished in the fall
of Jerusalem, come nearer to our lives than the
ancestral wisdom of barbarians, who fed their
swine on the Hercynian acorns." And he adds :
" We are to account mind, not matter, ideas, not
force, the spiritual property that gives dignity,
grace and intellectual value to history and its
action on the ascending life of man."

Then if this be so, the prophets of Israel are the

42 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

men who should be known above all others in the
Sacred History ; and once known, the whole of
the Bible comes into place. That, at any rate,
is the suggestion I venture to make. Resolutely
turn the attention of schools, congregations, Bible
classes from the earlier less edifying parts of the
book ; concentrate in whatever way practical
teachers can, upon the last and central period,
and we shall have exactly that kind of order which
previous ages of Christian culture have sought in
vain, an order consistent both with fact and with
the requirements of Christianity.

Let me briefly summarise certain advantages
which might follow from the bold adoption of this
four-stage order of Scripture:

(1) It satisfies the need which exists for a strong
theory of Biblical order, one that is truer than the
old, and worthy to replace it.

(2) It can guide the makers of schemes, head

masters and education committees, in the choice
of subjects. They will not ask their scholars to
perform feats of mental gymnastics by extracting
divine truth now from Numbers, now from
St. John.

(3) The next generation will be able to move
freely among the finer parts of Revelation. It
is deplorable how few people have the requisite
grounding for listening with profit to a chapter
of Isaiah.

(4) The theory advocated has apologetic value.

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 43

Half the attacks on the Old Testament become so
much waste paper when Christians begin to see
clearly what the older books can and what they
cannot give them.

(5) If it be known that, quite early, teachers
may be instilling into children ideas of God which
belong to a semi-barbaric stage of thought, then
they will wake up out of the deep slumber which
the Bible at present casts upon them. Inquiry
will be made as to what they are to teach, and an
interest be taken once more in reading up for the
Scripture Lesson.

(6) The scheme fits in with so much that has to
be known by missionaries and those who now work
amongst idolatrous nations. The historic and
actual victory of the One Holy Spiritual Being
achieved by and through the prophets, breathes
hope amid the manifold superstitions of East and
West.

(7) Lastly, the spiritually-minded man moves
more readily along these lines than he has ever
had the chance of doing before. After all his
theories of accommodation, and efforts at harmony,
and tendency to mysticism and allegory, he comes
to a quiet haven. He traces the blossoming out
of a desert garden of those very truths which he
loves, and marvels, as he does so, at the miracu-
lous conception of a spiritual religion. The
Psalmists sing to him from the peaks all
the more wonderfully, because he knows that

44 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

they had their homes in very dark valleys far
apart.

All these considerations may fairly be said to
point one way. There is awaiting the Scriptures
a new lease of life. The time has come when the
scientific methods of our forefathers and the mild
illustrative way. of our fathers do not fit the lock.
To each age its own way of finding fact and truth
founded on fact.

For long enough the Bible has stood out
claiming to be full of fact. It does not cease
making that claim. As unintelligible haphazard
fact it becomes either the book of the Mormon
and Boer or the sealed book of the ecclesiastical
seminary ; as intelligible fact it becomes an
authority for pure religion.

A. F. MITCHELL.

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 45

II. THE USE OF THE BIBLE FOR
CHRISTIAN EDIFICATION

In George Macdonald's " Alec Forbes of
Howglen" there is the pregnant statement, "A
practical interest is the strongest incitement to a
theoretical acquaintance." The incident which
occasions the comment is the schoolmaster's
discovery that his scholar's rendering, with a
remarkable accuracy, of a passage of Virgil having
reference to the setting of sails is due to his being
then engaged in building a boat for himself
(Chapter xxiv.). This saying brings us into the
very heart of our present subject. The use of
the Bible for Christian edification should be "the
strongest incitement " to the thorough and careful
study of it.

There are two interests that may be the motives
of such study. There is the scholarly interest :
the Bible appeals to the mind of man as literature,
as religious literature, even when there is no per-
sonal conviction regarding the truth and the worth
of the religion it enshrines. The sacred books of
other religions are being studied by Christian
scholars in order that they may be known and
understood ; so also may the Bible be. This kind
of study is not to be depreciated, for some have

46 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODEEN METHODS

engaged in it who have contributed much that is
of great value to an intelligent appreciation of
distinctive characteristics of the Bible. They have
displayed a patience, industry, and honesty in their
work, which those who have expounded and de-
fended the Bible as the authoritative literature of
their personal faith have not always succeeded in
showing. With this scholarly interest we are not
at present directly concerned, but with the religious
interest ; the Bible ought to be studied for the
enlightenment and quickening of the moral and
religious life of the student. It is evident that
this interest will direct the attention otherwise than
the scholarly interest.

Dr. Ward, one of the greatest of living psycholo-
gists, has pointed out that the content of our
knowledge depends on the direction of our atten-
tion, and that that is determined by a selective
interest. An artist and an angler will not see the
same things on a river bank, because they are
looking for things different. There are minutiae
of textual, literary, and historical criticism, which
are of utmost importance for the scholar, but which
have no interest for the devout reader. A text
that has the marrow of divine truth and grace in it
may involve no problems, and suggest no solutions
to the scholar. The Gospel according to John is
full of difficulties and perplexities for the scholar ;
it abounds in the most satisfying spiritual nourish-
ment for the soul of the Christian. Those passages

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 47

in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians which deal with
his relations to the Twelve are of primary impor-
tance for the scholar concerned with the history of
the Apostolic Church ; they awaken only a
moderate interest in the student who is seeking
help and guidance for his own life.

Does the difference of interest, which we may
freely and fully acknowledge, necessitate or justify
a difference of method? Can scholarship go on
without devotion, and devotion without scholar-
ship? As regards the former, it may he said
confidently that no religious literature will yield
up its secret to ability without sympathy. In
the Bible there are spiritual things which can be
only spiritually discerned. The undevout cannot
fully know and thoroughly understand the litera-
ture of devotion. Biblical science needs, indeed,
Christian piety.

As regards the latter, it is often assumed that
any way of treating the Bible that is found profit-
able for the religious life is legitimate and desirable,
although it may be entirely contrary to the method
of study recognised by scholarship. How dangerous
is this assumption will appear, I think, if we con-
sider what is the intention, and it must be added in
large measure the result of the use of this method
of scholarship. It is nothing less, and nothing else
than to get at the meaning of the writers them-
selves. It is in that, surely, and not in a sense
imposed on their words accidentally and arbitrarily,

48 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

that the mind of the Spirit is to be discovered. If
that be so, then the treatment of the Bible in which
the requirements of this method of study are
entirely disregarded is not according to truth ; and
I at least am convinced that what is not of truth
cannot be for profit.

The allegorical method stands condemned by
modern scholarship, and yet it is to be feared that
it is still in common use for Christian edification.
This method, instead of endeavouring to find out
the actual meaning of a passage, puts on it the
sense which the reader's own imagination, reasoning,
or emotion may suggest. The soul in this method
seeks and finds a reflection of its own beliefs and
feelings in the Bible instead of receiving the
revelation of the divine mind and will which it
contains.

It is sometimes argued that ignorant, uneducated
persons cannot use their Bible in any other way,
and that the Holy Spirit often guides them into
Divine truth and grace along these ways which
modern scholarship disapproves. Let it be freely
and fully conceded that those who live the life hid
with Christ in God gain a moral insight and a
spiritual discernment, which enables them to get at
the very core of the Divine revelation in the Bible ;
but it is their godliness and not their ignorance
that enables them to get what they do out of their
reading of the Bible. Have they not often quaint
fancies, grotesque imaginations that may help to

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 49

edify them, but would certainly not be for the
common edification of the Christian Church ? But
when there is the opportunity of knowledge,
ignorance is blameworthy. With the same godli-
ness knowledge can get more out of the Bible than
ignorance.

EspeciaUy must teachers beware of imparting to
their scholars views of the teaching of the Bible
which their fuller knowledge may afterwards
contradict. It is in this way that scepticism some-
times begins. When the young man or the young
woman begins reading independently, the instruc-
tion of a pious teacher is found in conflict with the
accepted opinions of Christian scholars, and the
shock may be so great as to overthrow all definite
convictions. But even for his own sake the teacher
should avoid this schism in his own inner life. He
cannot, and he ought not to insulate himself from
the information on these matters that is now
current everywhere. He ought to be informed on
all the matters that relate to the knowledge and
understanding of the Bible ; and if he is so in-
formed, it should be impossible for him, without a
sense of insincerity, even to make the attempt to
use the Bible for his own profit in any way which
is not according to truth.

It seems to be taken for granted that the study
of the Bible for Christian edification will be less
profitable as it is more truthful. Let me, then,
endeavour to show that the method of scholarship

5

50 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

is not a foe, but a friend to devotion. It is the
conception of the Divine revelation that the modern
method yields that the devout student is always to
maintain; he need not be concerned about the
problems scholarship is seeking to solve.

(1) Firstly, then, he is to think of revelation as
personal: God has inspired not words, but men;
and to get at the meaning of their words we must
get into vital sympathy with the men. There is
much in Paul's Epistles into which we shall read
our own meaning, which is a much poorer thing
than the Apostle's, unless we can place ourselves at
his standpoint, see the questions with his eyes, feel
the dangers with his heart. Here comes in the
value of the information we can gather about the
authors, the dates, the occasions of the books.

(2) Secondly, he is to think of revelation as pro-
gressive : the study of the Old Testament for
Christian edification is beset with two dangers. The
first is to impose a Christian meaning on the Old
Testament words ; the second is to impose on
Christian faith and duty the Old Testament
meaning. We miss a valuable lesson regarding
God's way of awakening in man the hope of
immortality, if we straightway take the last verse
of the seventeenth Psalm as a statement of the
Resurrection in the full Christian sense. "As for
me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness : I
shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness."
Christian morality and piety alike has suffered

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 51

from accepting principles and practices of the Old
Testament as of permanent validity. The idea of
God and the ideal for man of the Puritan had
much more of the severity of the Law than of the
graciousness of the Gospel, and that involved loss
and injury.

(3) Let the Christian student, thirdly, always
recognise that revelation is perfect in Christ alone ;
and that prophets and apostles alike must ever be
tested by the teaching, example, and spirit of Jesus.
As has already been indicated, a New Testament
meaning must not be imposed on the Old Testa-
ment words : but we may profitably study the Old
Testament to find in it the needs He meets, the
hopes He fulfils, the progress He completes. So
in the New Testament through evangelical testi-
mony and apostolic interpretation the endeavour
must always be to come into the presence of Christ
Himself, know the truth, and prove the grace.

(4) Lastly, it must not be forgotten that the
revelation is practical. We abuse the Bible if we
try to wrest from it answers to curious, speculative
questions about heaven or hell, the past of the
world, or its future, or to get from it information
about matters that science can teach us. The chief
end of revelation is redemptive ; it reveals God and
man in their relation as the Father who by His
grace saves and the sinner needing salvation.
Guidance for faith and duty that we should seek,
and that we shall find in the Bible. It is infallible

52 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

in leading men to Christ, who is both the image of,
and the way to God.

In closing it must be added that the use of the
Bible for Christian edification will lead us into a
region above and beyond the method of scholarship.
In religion there is a contact of the soul of man
with the Spirit of God. The Bible studied, as has
been already indicated, is fitted to be the occasion
of such contact. Under the illumination and
impulse of the Spirit of God to moral insight and
spiritual discernment will be given visions and
voices of God, that no amount of scholarship can
of itself attain. " The secret of the Lord is with
them that fear Him." Not other meanings than
the literal will be imposed on the words of Scrip-
ture as in the allegorical method, but the truth of
the seer will reveal profounder depths and the grace
of the saint sublimer heights than appear to the
common eye. God Himself will be realised more
vitally than the words themselves declare.

The revelation of the Scriptures is a living,
and, therefore, a growing unfolding of the mind
and heart of God. In objective content there is no
progress above or beyond Christ ; but in subjective
apprehension and appreciation there may be ad-
vance. The developing experience of the Christian
will legitimately invest the words of Scripture with
suggestions and associations that open the door of
finite human language and give free access to the
Divine truth and grace. Let the Bible be known

METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE 53

and understood properly, and through the true
sense of the words the deeper meanings will come.
The use of the Bible for Christian edification starts
from a different interest, and reaches a different
result, but uses the same method as the scholarly
study.

A. E. GARVIE.

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT OF THE
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER

IN our discussions the ideal teacher is too much
with us. His presence introduces a feeling of
unreality about all that we say. The teacher as we
find him in our Sunday Schools is so unlike what
we declare he ought to be, that we are apt to be
unduly depressed. Experienced superintendents
point out that we must take what we get, and be
thankful. The last two words are added mainly
for ornament, as the expression is seldom used in
anything like a thankful spirit. We expect too
much from our teachers. No doubt we cannot set
too high ideals before us ; but we must not blind
ourselves to the fact that teachers may be capable
of exceedingly good work, though they are far
below the standard of the ideal. We must re-
member that the work of the world is carried
on mainly by average persons.

Yet we rightly feel that we are not in a position
to accept any one who is willing, or who can be
persuaded, to become a Sunday School teacher.

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT 55

There must be a process of selection. It is here
that the weary superintendent is apt to become
very grim. He tells us that we have to take what
we caii get, or go without. The challenge must be
accepted. If we cannot get the sort of teachers we
want, then we must boldly adopt the alternative,
and do without. It is not absolutely necessary that
a particular Sunday School should go on; but
if it does go on, it is absolutely necessary that the
work should be done satisfactorily.

Accordingly, it becomes a matter of the first im-
portance that we should determine the minimum
qualifications we are entitled to exact, before we
accept the services of a Sunday School teacher.
"The essential equipment of the Sunday School
teacher" may refer to the ideal teacher, to the
merely good teacher, or to the teacher who is just
not bad enough to be rejected. Our best plan will
be to deal with the minimum requirements as basis,
and work in our higher demands after we have
determined the lower limit. There are at least five
essentials, of which the first three are largely of the
nature of data. The teacher either has or has not
certain qualities. If he has them, good and well ;
if he has them not, they cannot be imparted, and
all the superintendent can do is to refuse his
services.

The first essential is that the teacher should be a
person of character. It goes without saying that
he must lead a blameless life. But this is not

56 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

enough, even as a minimum. He must have
character in the more positive sense of exercising a
distinct moral force as an individual. He need not
be a powerful personality, but he must be at least
a personality that can be distinguished from other
personalities. He must not be in danger of the
condemnation that befel the soul of Tomlinson.

The second essential is concerned with the nature
of the matter to be taught. The teacher must
have a firm belief in the things he teaches. There
must be no teaching of one thing " for the good of
the pupil/' while the teacher believes something
quite different. It will be observed that this con-
dition involves no restriction regarding the things
to be believed. That is a totally different question,
and is to be treated at another sederunt. But
whatever it is agreed that the teacher should teach,
must be taught with full conviction. In ordinary
secular teaching there may be occasions where it is
permissible to teach certain doctrines with which
we are not in intellectual agreement ; but in reli-
gious teaching there does not seem to be room for
this aloofness. A minimum qualification, then, is
that the teacher should believe all that he teaches,
and that he should believe enough to make it worth
while teaching.

The third essential is that the teacher should
have sympathy with the young. Just as the
teacher cannot believe to order, so he cannot be
sympathetic to order. A certain amount of sym-

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT 57

pathy with the young must be assumed as a
minimum qualification. But the teacher may take
means to increase this sympathy by cultivating it.
Sympathy involves knowledge. We cannot sym-
patljise with what is quite foreign to ourselves. By
increasing our knowledge of children we may
develop our sympathy with them. But the kind of
knowledge is of importance. It is not essential
that the teacher should have a scientific knowledge
of childhood. All that is required is that he should
not have forgotten what it is like to be young. If
he is able to throw himself back into the past, and
live over again his early experiences, he is on
the direct road to the most serviceable knowledge
of his pupils. This is the minimum, and cannot be
regarded as more than a beginning of the study of
the young. On the other hand, there is a distinct
danger in child study, if attention is not continually
directed to the point of view. The teacher must
throughout his study seek to know the child by
putting himself, so far as possible, in the place
of the child, and regarding the world from the
child's standpoint. So soon as the child becomes a
mere " subject " for investigation, child-study has
ceased to be of practical value to the teacher.
Our pupils must never become mere specimens.

The fourth demand is one that is never likely
to be overlooked. Everybody is willing to admit
that a knowledge of the subjects to be taught
forms an essential part of the teacher's equipment.

58 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

There are those indeed who are puzzled to know
what else is essential but this knowledge. In
Sunday School we are less liable than are the
professional schoolmasters to over-emphasise the
value of mere knowledge. After all, we feel that
in our work the important thing is not what our
pupil knows, but what our pupil is. Our work is
to mould character rather than to impart know-
ledge. Some of the best Sunday School work has
been done by people who are what the world
would call ignorant. The whole spirit of
Christianity is opposed to those who despise the
unlettered. Yet the very word "teacher" has
now become associated with the communication
of knowledge, and a large part of the work of our
Sunday School teachers consists in communicating
a certain kind of knowledge. This knowledge is
communicated not for its own sake as mere know-
ledge, but as a means towards an end. We teach
certain things in order that our pupils may become
better men and women. Knowledge is used, in
fact, as an instrument.

But whatever its purpose, knowledge quite
obviously forms a part of the essential equipment
of the Sunday School teacher, and the question
naturally arises : How much knowledge must we
demand as a minimum ? On the one hand it may
be said with truth that the teacher cannot teach
what he does not himself clearly know. On the
other, it is possible for a teacher to be quite

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT 59

efficient in dealing with a given subject, and yet
have a very inadequate knowledge of that subject
in comparison with specialists who have made it
their life-work. Even in the mere communication
of knowledge as knowledge it is now generally
admitted that those who are only a little ahead
of their pupils, are not able to teach so success-
fully as those who have a wider sweep, and are
able to understand the subject in all its relations
and thus to arrange the elements in the way that
best leads to a comprehension of the subject as
a whole. Those who know only the rudiments of
a subject very frequently give a wrong exposition
of some of the elements, since the connection of
these elements with the deeper parts of the subject
is at that stage not known to the teacher. At
what stage of knowledge, then, it may fairly be
asked, is a teacher entitled to deal with a given
subject ? In order to answer we have to distinguish
between the matter of a subject, and the way in
which that matter is known. The question is not
so much : What does the teacher know ? as How
does the teacher know ?

To begin with, the teacher must know his
subject accurately, so far as his knowledge extends.
His pupils must not be called upon afterwards to
unlearn anything that he has taught them. On the
other hand, it may well be that at future stages,
his pupils, if they desire to acquire a mastery over
the subject studied, may have to add very con-

60 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

siderably to the knowledge the teacher is at present
able to give. The ideal Sunday School teacher
must know completely and accurately all the
literary details about the Bible, and all the
historical, geographical, archaeological and other
references. But it is not at all necessary that
these matters should be known in any detail or
with any extreme degree of accuracy in the case
of the " minimum " candidate. Mistakes in these
matters are regrettable incidents in teaching, but
they are not of fundamental importance.

It goes without saying that the teacher cannot
know too much about his subject. The lower
limit is more difficult to fix. If pressed for a
statement of the minimum knowledge qualification
of a Sunday School teacher I should be inclined
to say that he must have a knowledge of his own
limitations. Perhaps the surest mark of the
educated man is that he knows the limits of
his knowledge. If the unlettered Sunday School
teacher realises his own ignorance, he will make
the minimum number of those technical mistakes
that lead to the loss of the respect of his better
educated pupils.

But from the point of view of the teacher the
real knowledge, the knowledge that counts, is the
kind that is not merely an acquirement, but an
assimilation. Such knowledge has not merely
passed through the teacher's mind, it has become
a part of himself. It is not merely a possession.

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT 61

Knowledge that is not thus worked up into the
very being of the knower is not dynamic : it is not
the knowledge that is power.

Not all knowledge is worthy of being thus
incorporated, and the less worthy kind is that in
which mistakes are not of vital importance in
Sunday School teaching. The lessons of the
Bible may be living truths worked into the warp
and woof of the teacher's nature, even though that
teacher is very imperfectly informed on many
points, as, for example, on the manners and
customs of Biblical times.

As a working arrangement, the minimum know-
ledge-qualification may be said to be: a general
education sufficient to enable the teacher to make
an intelligent .use of the "aids" published in the
various Sunday School magazines. This implies
that he is not only able to receive the information
there supplied and pass it on to his pupils, but that
he can assimilate what he reads, and use it as a
means of expressing his message in a way that is
fundamentally his own.

The fifth essential qualification of the teacher
is a certain degree of skill in instruction. If he
can have a course of training so much the better.
But, as a minimum, he must be able to com-
municate his knowledge in such a way as to gain
his ultimate ends. These cannot be attained if
he can do no more than communicate knowledge.
He must not repel his pupils by his clumsiness,

62 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

though it is not demanded that, as a minimum
qualification, he must teach according to the most
approved methods. At this point we have to keep
quite distinct two things that are often confounded.
The successful teacher must fulfil two conditions :
he must keep his class in good order, and he must
communicate his knowledge in a reasonably good
form. Both conditions are indispensable. A man
may be able to maintain excellent order, and yet
be unable to teach. On the other hand, a man
may know and be able to apply the best method
of teaching, and may never get the chance of
beginning to teach because he is unable to maintain
order. Maintaining discipline is possible only to
those who have a certain strength of character.
This quality has been already set forth as our first
essential. If the teacher has not the necessary
power to keep his class in order, then he falls
below the requisite minimum, and must be rejected.
As to method, there is more hope. A man's
method may be improved by instruction from
without, though no amount of instruction can
put a backbone into a man who is naturally
invertebrate.

Even those teachers who ostentatiously proclaim
that they know nothing about method, exemplify
in their teaching quite a distinct method. This
may be a good method or a bad one. It is a
method all the same. In by far the majority of
cases the method is a traditional one, having been

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT 63

handed down from many generations of Sunday
School teachers. Some maintain that they teach
by the light of nature. They say that they have
formed their own methods without help from
any one. That they have ultimately formed an
individual method need not be denied : but that
they invented this method is a mis-statement.
In almost every case it will be found, on investiga-
tion, that teachers who make this assertion have
formed their first method upon that followed by
their own Sunday School teachers. As they were
themselves taught, so they teach others. Unfor-
tunately, the teacher who has made most im-
pression upon them, because he is the most
recent influence, is usually the teacher of the
highest class ;. and as the young teacher generally
makes a beginning with a very junior class, we
have the serious blunder of applying senior
methods to junior classes.

The case is even worse with those who have
not themselves been taught at a Sunday School.
With them the inevitable imitation is applied to
the sermons they have heard from the pulpit;
with the result that children in the lower school
are treated on a method that is difficult even for
grown people. That this is not an exaggerated
picture, may be shown by the fact that at
University training colleges the masters of method
have continually to fight against the tendency
their students have to begin their school teaching

64 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

on the model of the work done by their professors
in the University class-room. The training college
staff have to spend a great deal of time in making
their students aware of the need to distinguish
between the instruction given to students and
that suitable for children. It is in preventing this
vicious circle of imitation that books of method
and normal courses for Sunday School teachers do
their best work. A high degree of technical skill
is not always attainable, but in the Sunday School
mere technical skill is of much less importance
than in a secular school.

JOHN ADAMS.

TEACHER TRAINING

A SUNDAY School teacher must be a man
of earnest Christian convictions, and full of
that purposeful enthusiasm that compels him to
impart to others that which he knows and loves.
He must have a high ideal of the privilege and the
responsibility of teaching, and a strong deter-
mination to make his life a living example of
what he teaches. On the basis of upright
Christian character and a willingness to learn,
the ordinary man can be trained to become a true
teacher, an uplifting personal power among young
people.

BIBLE KNOWLEDGE.

1. The first requirement of his training is an
opportunity of systematic Bible instruction. The
groundwork of this is laid in the school life (Day
and Sunday School), and fuller knowledge should
be given in the upper classes of the Sunday School,
the minister's class, or in the Church Institute
classes. This side of his training should be the
special duty of the pastor of the Church; and
Christian congregations should recognise this as

6

66 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

one of the most important features of Church work,
and for this purpose should provide a Teachers'
Library of Reference Books. I know that many
of our young men hesitate to become teachers
because they have little knowledge, or the means of
obtaining it. The presence in a Church and its
Sunday School of an earnest band of Bible students
would be an incalculable benefit to all congre-
gational agencies.

2. Closely connected with this instruction in
Bible knowledge, and second only to it in import-
ance, is the need for instruction in the Principles
and the Art of teaching. The Sunday School
teacher must not only have Christian convictions
and sound Bible knowledge, but he must have
tact and skill in imparting his knowledge. He
must study the child, his ways, and methods of
thought ; he must present his knowledge in an
attractive form, stimulating from his intense
sympathy the best powers of his class, coming
down naturally to its level of intelligence and
uplifting it to higher things.

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES AND ART OF

TEACHING.

(a) A series of lectures should be given by a
skilled teacher on the elementary principles of
teaching, as the foundations of method to all
Sunday School teachers, before beginning to teach;

TEACHER TRAINING 67

and a more advanced series should be continued
during 'the early years of his teacherhood, dealing
mainly with difficulties to be encountered and
overcome, and the best methods in special circum-
stances, and under special conditions. Surely
there is no district where a skilled practical teacher
cannot be got, either voluntarily or for a moderate
honorarium, to give such lectures to earnest
students, and from his manifold experience to
give suggestive help and advice? I have found
in such classes the use of a small text-book (like
Professor Adams' little treatise) of great service,
and that, with the writing out of notes of lectures,
soon leads to thought, discussion, and study among
the students. The village teacher would find in
this employment as much congenial benefit as
does the principal of a great city school ; and the
Union should spare no pains to get the best men
all over the country to undertake this duty.

MODEL LESSONS.

(b) By means of model lessons on Saturday
afternoons, when the lesson for next day can be
taken by a skilled teacher with a class drawn from
a local Sunday School, much benefit is done to
young teachers in showing how a lesson should be
treated which they have to take next day. And
the good resulting from such meetings is enhanced
if the teacher, after the children have been dis-

68 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

missed, discusses with the students the methods
he has adopted in the lesson. In Leeds we arrange
not only that these model lessons are taken in
different districts by different teachers, but also
that different types of lessons are given Junior,
Intermediate, and Senior so that Sunday School
teachers may have an opportunity of seeing
different practical methods, such as would be
adopted in a well-graded school.

CONFERENCES OF SUPERINTENDENTS AND

TEACHERS.

(c) The superintendent should also hold meetings
with his teachers for the exposition and discussion
of methods, in order that the whole staff may be
brought into intelligent co-operation and mutual
sympathy. Such conferences are held in all good
day schools, and form the very foundations of
curriculum, tone, and discipline, and are beneficial
in training teachers in the true relation of class-
work to the whole-school work.

3. Every care should be taken not only in
selecting and training teachers, but also in
utilising their special gifts. One with musical
talent can be held responsible for the singing;
another with business-like aptitude can be for the
time turned to secretarial duties statistics, lists,
&c. ; and another of similar abilities to finance
details; while the book-lover should be entrusted
with the charge of the library. The athletic

TEACHER TRAINING 69

teacher could be a power for good in fostering
a fair, manly spirit in the scholars' games ; and
many a woman teacher has a gift, denied to men,
of "making socials go," and of "making trips
a success." Whatever touches the life of children
the personal influence of the Sunday School
teacher may sanctify to noble ends.

THE RECOGNITION BY CONGREGATIONS OF
CHRISTIAN PARENTS OF THE IMPORTANT
DUTIES OF SCHOOL TEACHERS.

4. The duties of congregations are equally
clear. If the demands on the time and energies
of Sunday School teachers are so great, they must
see that " the willing horses " are not overburdened
or overdriven. They must relieve them from
many other forms of Church work by doing their
own share of it. If to Sunday School teachers
Christian parents entrust a part of the spiritual
instruction of their children, and insist that that
shall be of the best, they must be considerate to
the Sunday School teachers in then* efforts to
improve themselves for their work. The difficulty
of getting teachers to attend training classes in
Leeds is often due to the numerous engagements
in other congregational schemes.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS.

5. In the practical training of Sunday School
teachers the value of the International Lessons

70 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

must be considered, as to many teachers at present
they are the sole means of enlightenment and
suggestion. No doubt these could be improved
by making several collateral series suitable for
Junior, Intermediate and Senior scholars; or the
same end might be obtained by suggestions being
made as to the treatment of the same lessons to
suit different grades in the schools. But better
than all published notes are the " Notes of Lesson "
drawn up by the teacher himself. With the
subject before him all the week, and the matter
early planned out, he can ponder over it in his
leisure, prove it in the fire of his own experience,
and hammer it out on the anvil of his own thought.
With such preparation, a lesson tempered with
tact and loving sympathy becomes a credit to
the teacher and a boon to the taught. Herein
we have the ideal teacher and the ideal lesson!
In making out this outline I have dealt with
methods that can be adopted in all districts, large
or small, and that can be carried out by the local
associations with the help and guidance of the
central authority of the Sunday School Union.
In looking over my notes, I find that I have
referred almost entirely to the man teacher. This
is due not to any want of appreciation of the
devotion and skill of lady teachers, but rather to
a desire to put the subject in a brief and suggestive
form.

DAVID FORSYTH.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS

I. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE FOR
SUNDAY SCHOOLS?

A S would be anticipated, the emergence in
JL~\ 1872 of the Lesson scheme which became
International was the result of the conditions
existing in the Sunday School world at that
period. And it is necessary rapidly to outline
the courses of Lesson Study adopted by
British and American Sunday Schools before
this epoch.

BRITISH LESSON SCHEMES FROM 1815 TO 1874.

Until the formation of the Sunday School
Union in July, 1803, the Sunday School Society
which preceded it (founded in 1785) limited its
operations to the establishment of new schools,
the supply of Bibles, and the payment of teachers.
If it is asked from what selection of subjects
were those children taught who were able to
read the Bible, an answer is not easy. " The data,"

71

72 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

says Mr. W. H. Groser (Senior Hon. Secretary
of the Sunday School Union) "are so scanty.
Doubtless in a large number of cases each teacher
chose from Sunday to Sunday what he or she
deemed most suitable or interesting, but the need
for some more systematic provision would soon
be recognised. As far back as the year 1786,
when that eccentric but genuine philanthropist,
Jonas Hanway, published his 'Comprehensive
View of Sunday Schools,' some brief extracts from
Scripture were appended to his treatise, together
with a few moral tales and 'lectures,' following
sundry columns of spelling. As the interest
felt by Christian ministers of various denomi-
nations widened and deepened, and especially
when those schools became affiliated with par-
ticular Churches and congregations, they would
naturally be led to see the necessity for more
systematic Bible teaching, and would draw up
lists for the use of their respective schools. This
we know some of them did. In Sunday Schools
belonging to the Church of England the lectionary
would be resorted to for the Scripture portions
used in instructing the children.

"For the Sunday School which I attended
when a boy in the City of London, the committee
had compiled and printed annual sets of lessons
in the form of small books, as early as the thirties.
Probably these served as pioneers to the Union
lists, especially as some of the officers of the

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 73

Silver Street Sunday School were also members
of the Executive of the Sunday School Union."

At the first public meeting convened by the
Committee 01 the Sunday School Union, in 1812,
it was reported that among the then very limited
number of the Society's printed publications was
" A Short List of Scriptures Designed as a Guide
to Teachers for a Course of Reading in Sunday
Schools." This list was prepared in 1805 by a
layman (Alderman John Heard, of Nottingham),
and it will be noted that it was provided for
reading purposes. Though not a periodical
publication, it was the germ from which all
subsequent lists of lesson-subjects developed.

In 1816 a Select Committee of the House of
Commons was appointed to consider and report
on "The Education of the Lower Orders of the
Metropolis." From the evidence then given one
gets glimpses of the conditions amid which the
Sunday School worked in the earlier decades of
the nineteenth century. Large numbers of the
children were employed in the week, and con-
sequently attended no day school. In Hoxton,
out of seventy-three children gathered into a
Sunday School, only two could read, and these
not sufficiently to read in the New Testament.
The schools usually met three times on a Sunday.
The morning and afternoon sessions were devoted
to reading and spelling, Bible and Testament
classes, catechism, repetition of Scripture and

74 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

hymns. At the evening session Scripture was
rehearsed. The classes were small, and it is
significant of the "mothering" that the school
had to undertake at this time that the teachers
were required to see that the hands and faces
of the scholars were clean, and that they were
decently clothed. Writing was taught gratuitously
on week evenings. It was found that on an
average it took a child three years to learn to
read, and that scholars rarely stayed more than
two years in a school. "Not only juvenile
illiteracy, but also the high prices of Bibles and
Testaments, tended to restrict their use. The
schools were poor, and the parents of the children
were poor likewise; and a Bible at 3s. 7d., or
even a Testament at Is. 3d. the prices charged
in 1825 could be obtained only in very limited
numbers. As elementary education extended,
first the spelling-books, and after some further
interval the reading-books, gave place to the
cheapened Bible, which thus gradually won its
fitting place as the text-book of the Sunday
School.''^

This was not a time when much systematic
Bible study could be undertaken, and it was
inevitable that the religious instruction given
should be a reflex of that given in the pulpit.
The chief aims were to convict of sin and to

1 See " A Hundred Years' Work for the Children," p. 35.
By W. H. Groser, B.Sc. 1903. (Sunday School Union.)

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 75

awaken trust in the Saviour. These aims must
indeed ever be central with the school, but deve-
loped in the shadow of adultism they tended to
make teaching "sermonic." The effort was less
to inform the mind and to co-ordinate facts and
doctrines into an intellectual system than to
impress the heart and conscience. In such con-
ditions lesson schemes are not likely to be much
emphasised. All that will be felt to be necessary
will be a course of studies from Scripture which
provide doctrinal opportunities.

Yet very early it was seen to be advantageous
for all children in the school to have the same
Bible lesson, and lesson schemes began to multiply.
In 1838 the late Mr. Robert Mimpriss published
for schools and families " Our Lord's Life and
Ministry," arranged in a series of lessons, " narra-
tive, practical, and geographical," and illustrated
by charts. The lessons gave a general outline of
the words and works of Jesus, constructed from
a harmony of the Gospels, and were a serious
effort to promote continuity in study, and to give
an intelligent grasp of the Gospel history. Each
lesson began with narrative, and was followed
by a series of questions and practical inferences
"for example and warning." Mr. Mimpriss'
publications included a variety of pictorial and
chronological charts, maps, and Scripture prints,
which were hailed by the religious journals as
"forming a new era in Scriptural education."

76 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

THE FIRST UNIFORM LESSONS.

Two years later (1840) the Sunday School
Union stepped into the field with a double list
of Scripture Lessons for Sunday Schools for
"Testament" and "Bible" Classes respectively,
each providing a morning and an afternoon lesson
from the Old or New Testament for every Sunday
in the year. In 1842 the distinction between
Bible and Testament classes was abandoned, and
the morning and afternoon readings were made
to bear upon the same subject. The lists from
1840 to 1842 embraced the following topics:

1840 (2 LISTS).

1. Testament Class. Morning : " Acts of the Apostles.

Afternoon : " Life of Christ."

2. Bible Class. Morning : " Genesis and Exodus." After-

noon : " Life of our Lord."

1841 (2 LISTS).

1. Testament Class. Morning : (t Life of our Lord." After-

noon : " Acts of the Apostles."

2. Bible Class. Morning : Judges and Kings of Israel.

Afternoon : Acts and Selection from Epistles' teaching
Christianity in relation to Business, Charity, Obedience
to Parents, &c.

1842 (i LIST).

Varied selection from all parts of New Testament on the
Attributes of the Deity, the Work of Christ, the Work
of the Holy Spirit, and the Duties of the Young
Christian.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 77

These annual lists were published by the Sunday
School Union until the International Lesson system
was launched in 1874, and they are to some extent
repeated in the courses of Lessons for the Morning
School, which are still published annually along
with the International.

SCOTLAND.

During this period there was a remarkable
quickening in the appreciation of the school as an
educational institution. In Scotland, for example,
as the excellent handbook on "The Sabbath School
and Bible Teaching," by James Inglis, 1 shows, great
value was attached to order, connection, and all
that makes for historical knowledge of Scripture.
The importance of the infant school was fully
recognised, and stress was laid upon adequate pre-
paration for teaching. One of the earliest lesson
schemes published in Scotland was prepared by
the Glasgow Sabbath School Union, and issued in
1846. The list was doctrinal in character, and the
subjects began with " Man is a lost and helpless
sinner," and traced the main outlines of Christian
doctrine, closing with " The Intercession of Christ,"
" Christ will raise the dead," " Christ will judge
the world," "Christ should be worshipped." A
portion of Scripture was appointed to be com-
mitted to memory, and parallel passages were also
indicated to complete the study of each topic.
1 Published in Edinburgh in 1850.

78 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

WALES.

In Wales the Church was in the Sunday School
from the first, and its distinctive note was the
catechetical method. The school usually met in
the chapel, the younger children being sent into
some adjoining room.

"Both officers and teachers," says the Rev. H.
Elvet Lewis, " were severally elected for a period
of six or twelve months the terms of office
varying from time to time. All the scholars
(except the infant classes), as well as the teachers,
voted in the election of superintendent and
secretary ; then each class, successively, had two
or three names submitted to it, and the one who
had the largest number of votes became its teacher.
It is to be borne in mind that most of the classes
were composed of adults, or of young men and
women.

"Three Sundays were given to a chapter, or
portion of a chapter, of some twenty verses; slightly
more or less as the case might be. Most of the
teacher's work was done by asking questions,
rather than by commenting himself. On the
afternoon of the fourth Sunday that being in-
variably the monthly Communion Sunday the
entire school occupied the gallery only, the
members of each class sitting together. The
chapter or monthly portion was recited either
class by class, or by the whole of the classes in

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 79

unison; though, perhaps, 'intoning' would more
approximately describe it than ' reciting/ Then
the minister questioned the school as to the
contents of the monthly portion; and as he was
an expert catechist, he knew how to adapt his
questions to the capacity of each class in turn.
Sometimes a difference of opinion would arise on
some moot theological point ; he would allow
the discussion to widen and to catch fire occa-
sionally ; but he knew when to intervene and
save the discussion from becoming a mere dispute."
This system has bound the Welsh Sunday Schools
closely to the Churches, and has given them their
distinctive character.

These notes are sufficient to show that the prin-
ciple of a Uniform Lesson was accepted and
adopted by many schools as far back as 1842, but
that the majority of schools in England followed
independent lines. In Wales and Scotland the
school was more closely attached to the church,
and the lesson courses came more under minis-
terial and denominational direction. In England,
at any rate, the educational and philanthropic
impulses that were marked features in the Sunday
School, while the State took a languid interest in
education and reform, gradually lost force as day-
schools became more numerous and efficient and
the condition of the masses improved. The re-
ligious impulse, always powerful, thus became
supreme, and the teaching tended to become more

80 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

and more evangelistic and hortatory. It is also
worthy of note, since the fact is not without a
hearing upon the curriculum of the schools, that
until 1821 it was "the custom honourahly to
dismiss all scholars who had reached the age of
fourteen if their conduct had been satisfactory.
This was done publicly by the superintendent or
minister, with the gift of a Bible and a few words
of kindly commendation and counsel." J

AMERICAN LESSON SYSTEMS BEFORE 1872.

To trace in detail even the successful systems in
use in the United States prior to 1872 would
require a volume. All that is possible is to give
a rough outline of the more notable ; and for the
opportunity of doing this I am indebted to the
Rev. Edwin Wilbur Rice, D.D. (Editor-in-Chief
of the publications of the American Sunday School
Union).

The oldest Sunday School society in America
is the existing "First Day, or Sunday School,
Society," of Philadelphia, which was founded in
1791 to give instruction in reading and writing
from the Bible, and generally to promote the
religious welfare of children. The teachers were
paid about 25 a year for their services.

This plan of instruction gave way in 1816 to
The Unlimited Memorising Lessons, which, taking
the Scripture list issued by the British Sunday
1 " A Hundred Years' Work for the Children," p. 37.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 81

School Union as a basis, devoted the entire time
of the session to reading, memorising, and reciting
long passages of Scripture.

But very soon an improved system of lessons
was desired, and a plan for systematising the
course of instruction from the Scriptures came
into use in 1825. Selected portions were arranged
for every Sabbath in the year, comprising from
ten to twenty verses, the same lesson being used
throughout the school. This system became known
as The Limited Uniform Lessons. The first year's
course was upon the Life and Works of Jesus. So
popular did this course become, that a five years'
scheme was based upon it, designed to cover the
whole Bible. The following is an outline of the
scheme :

FIRST YEAR. The Life and Works of Jesus.
SECOND YEAR. The Parables and Teaching of Jesus.
THIRD YEAR. Lessons from the Epistles and Revelation.
FOURTH YEAR. Old Testament Prophecies and Narra-
tives.
FIFTH YEAR. The Book of the Acts.

Out of this course also sprang a series of Helps,
including "Judson's Questions on the Lessons,"
which were graded in three sections of growing
difficulty. These questions achieved a wide popu-
larity, and were printed and circulated in England
by the Religious Tract Society.

The scheme as a whole proved very successful ;
but some workers missed the old custom of memo-

7

82 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

rising Scripture, and these were attracted by the
Moravian plan of committing to memory one
verse of Scripture each day, and then making these
seven verses the subject of study on the following
Sunday. The Verse-a-day system found favour in
many parts of America, but it never took vigorous
root.

A little later (about 1840) a nine years' course
of studies (four in the Old Testament and five in
the New) was issued by the American Sunday
School Union, and was described as the Union
Lessons. This system of Lessons made great use of
questions, and as Lessons notes were issued week
by week on the topics assigned, the system was
more widely used than any or all of the systems
then in use in America. The treatment of the
Lesson was fivefold, based on a method recom-
mended by Mr. James Gall viz., narrative, ques-
tions, explanation, symbols, and practical lessons.

The use of the Union Lessons was largely
broken down by the various denominations in
America forming Sunday School Societies of their
own, and desiring to have lesson courses shaped by
themselves. Hence followed a period marked by
what was humorously called " The Babel Series."
But this period of individual effort led to a careful
study of the needs of the schools, and to the
publishing of Graded Lessons designed for Begin-
ners and Advanced classes.

In this sketch we have given the chief schemes

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 83

only. There were many others issued that had
greater or less popularity, such as McDowell's
Lessons, the lessons of Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, the
Rev. Dr. Breed* and others. Some of these lessons
called for editions of 100,000 copies at a time.
Nor is there space to do more than mention the
Elementary Scripture Question Books in three
series, prepared for beginners, and the graded
, series of " Bible Readers' " Lessons, made especially
for the negro race.

EMERGENCE OF THE " INTERNATIONAL " LESSONS.

In 1864 Mr. D. L. Moody was conducting
evangelistic services at Springfield, Illinois, and
among those inspired with new zeal for the
kingdom of Christ were Mr. B. F. Jacobs, of
Chicago, and Dr. Eggleston. By a coincidence,
which one must believe had the Divine Will
behind it, at the same time, the Rev. J. H.
Vincent, a Methodist minister of Chicago, floated
the Sunday School Teachers' Quarterly, containing
four optional series of lessons, one arranged from
the British Sunday School Union's list. He was
supported by the Chicago Sunday School Union,
though his desire to establish a Uniform Lesson
for all schools was opposed by Dr. Eggleston as
repressive of individuality and freedom. In 1866
the Quarterly became a monthly, under the title
of the Sunday School Teacher. This introduced a

84 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

new era, and for the first time complete lesson
notes and scholars' papers -were issued together.
One scheme was Mr. Vincent's own. It was
undenominational, and covered "two years with
Jesus." Each lesson had a Golden Text, and
Home Readings were provided.

In 1868 Mr. B. F. Jacobs tried to extend the
principle of uniformity throughout the States.
He induced the Standard, a Baptist weekly pub-
lication in Chicago, to begin printing weekly lesson
notes prepared by himself, and with extraordinary
enthusiasm and persistence he began to advocate
the plan before conventions and to press it upon
editors.

On August 8, 1871, at Mr. Jacobs' suggestion,
and as a result of his personal efforts, representa-
tives of twenty-nine publishing houses met in
Chicago to consider a scheme of Uniform Lessons.
The outcome of the discussion was that a com-
mittee of five was appointed to prepare a list. The
five chosen were Dr. Eggleston, Dr. Vincent, Dr.
Newton, Rev. H. C. McCook, and Mr. B. F.
Jacobs. Next day three of them met and decided
that the scheme was impossible, and sent a notice
to that effect to the papers. At the next meeting,
however, thanks to the presence and representations
of B. F. Jacobs, the decision was reversed, and the
Uniform Lesson plan was permitted to make its
appeal to the world. At first not a single Ameri-
can denomination was favourable, for to accept it

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 85

meant rendering useless valuable plates and the
copyrights of many series of Lesson Helps.

In 1872 the Fifth National Sunday School Con-
vention met at Indianapolis, Indiana, and after full
discussion voted in favour of a Uniform Lesson for
all Sunday Schools. The first committee consisted
of five clergymen and five laymen from the United
States, and one clergyman and one layman from
Canada, and it was appointed to select the first
seven years' course (1873-1879). The course was
to embrace a general study of the whole Bible,
alternating between the Old and New Testaments
semi-annually or quarterly. Every six years a new
committee was elected by the Convention, the
names being chosen by a specially appointed
nominating committee. Meetings were to be held
six or eight times during the six years, the expenses
of travelling being paid by the publishers of the
leading Lesson Helps. No other expenses were to
be incurred.

The fundamental principles laid down by the
Convention for the guidance of the Lesson Com-
mittee were:

1. One lesson for all grades.

2. The Old Testament and the New Testament

to be covered in equal portions.

3. The Course to be completed in six years.

4. A Temperance Lesson to be assigned once a

quarter.
The Lessons prepared by this Committee secured,

86 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

at the very beginning of 1873, almost universal
acceptance through America, and the Committee
of the British Sunday School Union, before the
close of the year, after a long conference with Dr.
Vincent, adopted the series as their Afternoon
Lessons from the beginning of 1874, which then
became really International. Ever since they have
co-operated with the American Lesson Committee
in the preparation and issue of the Lessons.

GREAT BRITAIN CO-OPERATES.

At Atlanta, in 1878, the committee was increased
by the addition of four members, including two
corresponding members (Mr. F. J. Hartley and
Mr. W. H. Groser) appointed by the British Sunday
School Union.

The committee now consists of two sections,
the British and the American, both collaborating in
the construction of the Lesson courses. It may be
of interest to give the names of each section as
they appear to-day (February, 1907).

THE LESSON COMMITTEE.

American Section.

Rev. John Potts, D.D., Toronto (Chairman).

Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D., New York (Hon. Secretary).

Rev. O. P. Gifford, D.D., Buffalo.

Prof. C. R. Hemphill, D.D., Louisville.

Principal W. Patrick, D.D., Winnipeg.

John R. Pepper, Memphis.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 87

Prof. Ira M. Price, Ph.D., Chicago.

Rev. Elson I. Rexford, M.A., LL.D., Montreal.

Rev. Mosheim Rhodes, D.D., St. Louis.

Rev. J. R. Sampey, D.D., LL.D., Denver.

Edwin L. Shuey, M.A., Dayton.

Prof. J. S. Stahr, D.D., Lancaster.

Rev. B. B. Tyler, D.D., Denver.

Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D., LL.D., Denver.

British Section.

Rev. Alfred Rowland, D.D. (Chairman).

W. H. Groser, B.Sc. (Hon. Secretary).

F. F. Belsey, J.P.

Rev. Alex. Connell, M.A. (since retired).

Rev. R. Culley.

Prof. S. W. Green, M.A.

Rev. S. S. Henshaw.

Rev. Frank Johnson.

Rev. C. H. Kelly.

Frederick Taylor.

Edward Towers.

Rev. W. J. Townsend, D.D. (since retired).

Charles Waters.

[The following have been elected members of the
Committee since the Conference met : Professor
A. S. Peake, M.A., Principal W. F. Adeney, D.D.,
and Principal A. E. Garvie, D.D.]

The principle of one lesson for all grades has so
far been modified that successive conventions have
sanctioned the framing and issuing of optional
courses for Beginners and Senior classes. A
primary course of simple lesson subjects was
decided on by both the English and the American

88 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

committees in 1894. The word " International,"
however, is not applied to these courses. A re-
laxation of the second principle of giving equal
time to each Testament has also been permitted,
the usual practice now being to two and a-half
years to the Old Testament and three and a-half
years to the New.

THE COMMITTEE'S METHOD or WORK.

The method of work adopted by the American
section of the International Sunday School Lesson
Committee is thus described by Dr. A. F. Schauffler,
the hon. secretary of the Lesson Committee :

The life of each committee, which is appointed
every six years by the International Sunday School
Union, of course, governs its work in the selection
of the Lessons. Each committee selects a six
years' course. After the election of the committee
a sub-committee is always appointed to block out a
tentative six years' course in general outline, three
and a-half years to be devoted to the New Testa-
ment and two and a-half years to the Old Testa-
ment. This outline is then submitted to the
British section of the committee for suggestion.
On its return from Great Britain it is then cast
into its final shape. On that two sub-committees
are appointed, one for the New Testament and one
for the Old Testament lessons. These committees
prepare the Lesson Topics and Golden Texts in
detail. They are then presented to the full com-

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 89

mittee, which meets once in each calendar year,
and forwarded for suggestion and criticism to the
British section.

After such changes as the two committees
agree upon, the result is printed as a "tentative
outline," and is sent broadcast throughout the
Sunday School world namely, to all Sunday
School writers in the United States, to the London
Sunday School Union for distribution among their
constituency, to Canada, to India, and elsewhere.
Suggestions, criticisms, and emendations are soli-
cited from all to whom the tentative course is
submitted.

Of course, this has to be done far hi advance of
the time when the Lessons are to be used. For
example, the tentative course for the year 1908
was sent out in the summer of 1905. Criticisms
were returned and considered at the Lesson Com-
mittee's annual meeting last April. The result of
the meeting was to issue an official final set of
lessons for the year 1908, due consideration having
been given to all the suggestions sent in from all
over the Sunday School world. Not all these sug-
gestions could be accepted. For example, from
India came the request for more emphasis on the
sin of idolatry. From others came the request for
an annual " Patriotic Sunday," or one lesson a year
on " Kindness to Animals," or more emphasis on
" Governmental Corruption." It is clear from the
above standpoint that the committee cannot adopt

90 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

all suggestions made. When the final lesson list is
issued it is sent at once to the publishers for sub-
mission to their Lesson writers.

So far as the American Committee is concerned,
it may be of interest to state that the General
Committee, which meets annually, devotes not less
than two full days of three sessions each to the
consideration of topics to be selected. This is in
addition to the work of the sub-committees, which
are preparatory to that of the General Committee.
The attendance of the General Committee at the
annual meeting involves not less than 27,000 miles
of travel. This gives some idea of the expenditure
of time that is called for hi preparation of the
International Lesson scheme. It may be added
that the Committee is appointed by the Inter-
national Convention of Sunday School teachers,
and is representative of the principal Denomina-
tions.

SYNOPSIS OF THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS

FROM 1874-1911.

(Where only one subject is given, a year's study is indicated;
where two appear, six months was given to each.)

SUBJECTS. BOOKS.

1874 Life of Moses ... Exod. and Deut.

Life of Christ ... .... ... Mark.

1875 Old Testament History Joshua

to Saul ... Josh, to Sam.

Life of Christ John.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS

91

SUBJECTS.

1876 Old Testament History Saul

to Solomon

Studies in Acts of Apostles ...

1877 The Divided Kingdom
Studies in Acts ...

1878 From Rehoboam to Captivity ...
Life of Christ

1879 Old Testament History After

the Return

Studies in Epistles

1880 Life of Christ

From Creation to Joseph

1881 Life of Christ

1VJ. OSCo * 'i

1882 Life of Christ

1883 Studies in Acts

From Joshua to Samuel

1884 Life and Writings of Paul
David and Solomon ...

1885 St. Paul ... -..

Elijah and Elisha, &c....

1886 The Captivity (one quarter) ...
Life of Christ (three quarters)

1887 The Creation to Exodus

Life of Christ (last six months)

1888 Life of Christ (first six months)
From Exodus to Samson

1889 Life of Christ

From Saul to Solomon ...

1890 Life of Christ

1891 Old Testament History, from

Division to Captivity ...
Life of Christ

1892 Old Testament Lessons
Acts of Apostles

1893 Israel after Captivity Job and

Prophets ...

BOOKS.

Sam., Chron. & Provs.

Acts.

i and 2 Kings.

Acts.

Chron. to Dan.

Luke.

Ezra and Prophets.

Epistles.

Matt.

Gen.

Luke.

Exod.

Mark.

Acts.

Josh, to Sam.

Acts and Epistles.

Sam. and Kings.

Acts and Epistles.

Kings and Isa.

Kings, Jer. and Dan.

John.

Gen. and Exod.

Matt.

Matt.

Exod. to Judges.

Mark.

Samuel.

Luke.

Kings and Chron.

John.

Isa., Jer., Psa. & Dan.

Acts.

Ezra,Neh., Job &Eccl.

92 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

1893
1894

1895
1896

1897
1898

1899

1900
1901
1902

1903
1904

-The Divided

From the Exile
of

1906
1907
1908

Under discussion.

f I 99
1910

vign

SUBJECTS,

Life and Epistles of St. Paul ...

Old Testament History Crea-
tion to Exodus

Life of Christ (last six months)

Life of Christ (first six months)

Jewish History to David

Life of Christ

Jewish History David and
Solomon

Studies in Acts and Epistles ...

Life of Christ

Jewish History
Kingdom

Life of Christ .

Jewish History-
Life of Christ Harmony
Gospels

Life of Christ (first six months)

The Patriarchs

Primitive Christian Church ...

Jewish History Moses
Samuel

Primitive Christian Church

Jewish History Samuel
Solomon

Life of Christ

Life of Christ

The Jewish Nation

Words and Works of Jesus ...

Patriarchs to Samuel

The Witness of John to Jesus...

Saul to Solomon

The Expansion of the Early
Church

Glory, Decline, and Restora-
tion of Israel

The Gospel of the Kingdom ...

to

to

BOOKS.

Acts and Epistles.

Gen. and Exod.
The Four Gospels.
The Four Gospels.
Exod. to i Sam.
Luke.

Sam. and Kings.
Acts and Epistles.
Matt.

Kings and Chron.

John.

Dan., Ezek., Neh., &c.

The Four Gospels.
The Four Gospels.
Gen. to Exod.
Acts.

Exod., Deut, Judges.

Acts.

Sam. to Kings.

Synoptic Gospels.

John.

Chron. to Malachi.

Synoptic Gospels.

Gen., Exod., Josh., &c.

John.

i and 2 Sam.

Acts and Epistles.

Kings to Malachi.

Matt.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 93

The important part played by the International
Lesson system in the life of Sunday Schools is
evident from this rapid survey of the facts.

It has rescued them from a chaos of conflicting
systems, and helped to create the solidarity which
makes organised progress possible. Further, by
uniting the scattered units, it has given the sense
of common interests, emphasised the essential
truths of the Gospel, and brought the rich stores
of scholarship to every teacher's door. The very
desire for teacher-training, more continuous Bible-
study, and an improvement in the courses of study,
are the fruits of the system's own growing.

Finally, it has educated the schools to understand
and appreciate the need for still further develop-
ment, and with the Lesson Committee alert,
responsive, .and wise, there is no reason why a
system which for a generation has rendered such
magnificent service to the Kingdom of Christ
should not only continue to contribute this service,
but also to extend its range and improve its effici-
ency. Evolution and not catastrophe is what is
desirable.

FRANK JOHNSON.

94 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

II. DEFECTS AND SUGGESTED
REMEDIES

It is pleasant, when we are compelled to criticise
a scheme or an institution, to begin with points
of agreement, and I therefore seek at the outset for
points of contact between my own ideas and those
which seem to underlie the International system
of lessons. I share with those who are responsible
for it a deep conviction as to the imperious claims
of the children and the young people on the attention
of the Church. I agree that in the training given
to them an important place must be assigned to
definite religious instruction. If I am right in the
assumption that the very preparation of a scheme of
lessons expresses the conviction that such training
should be of a systematic and not a haphazard
character, I hold that conviction even more strongly.
I assent further to the position that a supreme place
must be given to the Bible in this work. I heartily
believe that the reading of the Bible may be one
of the richest channels of spiritual nourishment and
edification. The main motive that has prompted
such criticisms of the present system as I have
offered, has been my desire to win for the Bible
a larger and worthier opportunity. My experience

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 95

of the effects of the International scheme has led
me to ask where its defects lie and what can be
suggested for them. In presenting to this Con-
ference a summary of defects I labour under the
disadvantage that several of its members are already
familiar with what I have to say, since I have stated
them in detail and have nothing to alter in deference
to such criticisms as I have received, except possibly
that one or two trivial details might be differently
expressed.

It is, I am glad to believe, unnecessary to linger
over the question of the uniform lesson. The prin-'
ciple that Juniors and Seniors should have special
courses assigned to them has been conceded, so
that its theoretical soundness at least may be now
assumed. It is my conviction that we must go
farther along this path, but that we have come so
far is matter for thankfulness. I pass on, then, to
the defects I find in the general scheme of lessons.

In the general mapping out of the scheme there
are two salient defects. The first is that in the
whole cycle there is no other type of lesson among
the hundreds of which it consists than the lesson
attached to a few verses of Scripture. It is not
my point that non-Biblical subjects are ignored,
but that subjects which ought to be included in
the curriculum are passed by because they cannot
be effectively treated in dependence on a fragment
of that kind. The staple of such teaching as is to
be desired would be Biblical, but it might sum-

96 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

marise many passages rather than emerge in muti-
lated form in connection with one, or it might
present a bird's-eye view of a much larger section
in such a way as to bring out its significance as no
detailed study of detached fragments could do. I
miss the presence of a larger imagination as to
variety of method in teaching the Bible. It can
surely not be the case that a literature like the
Bible is to be taught only in one way. Let us
hope that this relic of earlier methods may soon
be discarded, and the syllabus be relieved of its
dreary monotony. The second defect is that the
extracts are chosen from too narrow a field. Large
sections of Scripture are almost completely un-
touched, and among these some of the most im-
portant. Partly this is due to the uniform lesson.
As it is, the lessons selected are often above the
heads of the younger children, and this would be
still more the case if the area of selection were
widened in the direction indicated. This difficulty
will disappear of itself with a proper grading of
the lessons. I learn on the best authority that a
biographical interest controls the choice of lessons.
This has obvious merits, though the principle is
rather imperfectly carried out. But there is much
that cannot come under this head that ought to
be brought in at some point in the course, the Upper
Middle or the Senior being probably the best place
for it.
Next we may notice the way in which the parts

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS x 97

\

selected are treated. Here again two salient defects
are to be observed. The first is that there is often
no continuity between the lessons, and thus instead
of a series which leaves a connected impression we
have a series of incoherent fragments that are often
largely unintelligible because the antecedents of
the narratives have been omitted. And what adds
to the confusion is that often even the single in-
cident is only partly told, the beginning or the end
or perhaps both being omitted. This largely springs
from another prevalent characteristic, the undue
brevity of the lessons. They err occasionally, it
is true, in the other direction, when the subject
matter is unusually difficult. But generally the
tendency is for them to be too brief. And no
proportion seems to be observed between the length
of a lesson and its simplicity. A further disastrous
consequence follows from the cutting down of the
lesson, that the amount of Scripture read is quite
inadequate. Let us never forget that the success
or failure of a lesson is to be judged by this test.
Has the teacher contrived to lodge the passage
in the pupil's memory? The exposition is quite
secondary in importance to this, but the natural
inference from the length of the selections would
be very different.

A further and very important point is that the
nature of Scripture itself as a revelation in history
indicates for us the line on which Bible teaching
should proceed. It must exhibit revelation as a

8

98 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

process in history if justice is to be done to the
form in which it has pleased God to give it us.
The choice of lessons should be informed through-
out with the purpose of impressing on the pupils
a sense of the intimate connection of the truth
enshrined in Scripture with the experience through
which the nation or the community or the individual
was called to pass. The main stream of history in
Israel gives us the key to many things in the Old
Testament. Much of it seems to stand in a loose
connection with religion. But its connection is
really intimate, for many of the deepest things the
prophets have to tell us lose half their significance
and beauty when cut away from their historical
root. Where so much has to be left out it is
imperative that we should construct the syllabus
so as to give a vivid impression of the movement
of the history. This principle will lead to a large
change in the method of selection. For the passages
will not be chosen as isolated units to which a moral
can be attached, but as parts of a connected whole
designed to give an impressive view of God's self-
revelation in the history of Israel. And we shall
thus permit the Bible to do its own work and make
its own appeal, an appeal which will not come with
the force of a brief section behind it, but will grow
with large impressiveness out of a whole series of
narratives. A sense of God's action in history and
the inflexible character of the moral laws that ex-
press His nature and His will, would not be the

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 99

least of the lessons that might be taught in this
way.

I pass on to the suggestions for the improvement
of the curriculum. I should have thought it un-
necessary to refer explicitly to the limitations that
we have to face were it not that I have positively
been regarded as ignorant or forgetful of them.
I am well aware that we have in a vast number
of instances simply half an hour in the week to
count on for the lesson, and that a Sunday School
is not a theological college. If I neglected to call
attention to such facts, I did so simply because it
did not occur to me to labour the obvious, and, if
I may say so, because I rashly assumed that I should
be credited with some familiarity with the elements.
The shortness of the time at our disposal is to my
mind no argument for giving up as hopeless the
attempt to introduce a more coherent scheme, it
impresses me rather with the sense of its greater
urgency. The time is so short, then let us get the
very best we can out of it ! And as to the theo-
logical college, I may simply say that I should not
as a matter of fact draft a course for the Sunday
School on the lines I follow in my college lectures.

Having swept these irrelevancies out of the
way, I come first to the question of grading. We
are, I believe, unanimous in the view that the
Juniors and the Seniors should have courses dis-
tinct from the Intermediate section. But I feel
clear in my own mind that this section should be

100 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

divided at least into two. As to the choice of
subjects for the various departments I speak with
diffidence as to the Juniors. I think the story
must have the most prominent place, and I favour
stories drawn from Genesis, selected with care,
and from the Synoptic Gospels, not necessarily
read by the children, but if it be thought desirable
told to them or read to them. Many of the points
on which I have to dwell in speaking of the higher
parts of the school will have no application to
the Juniors. I have given elsewhere my reasons
for the view that the Lower Middle should take
the history to the death of Elisha in the Old
Testament and to the death of Stephen in the
New. The Upper Middle should take the rest
of the history, drawing on the prophets and the
Epistles for historical and biographical material.
Selections from Psalms and Proverbs and ethical
teaching of the Epistles might be included.

The suggestions I should make for the Advanced
Course are much more elaborate, so that I could
not profitably attempt to detail them here. I pass
on, therefore, to the question of the filling in. I am
well aware that the difficulty becomes much more
acute in the detailed construction of the syllabus
than in the sketching of an outline. It is necessary,
however, to shape the outline as the first stage and
then to approach the filling in with a clear idea
of the principles by which we must be guided.
First, then, we must abolish as far as possible the

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 101

disconnected character of the lessons, and not leave
stories half told. Omission is, of course, necessary,
but it should be so skilfully carried out that the pupil
shall not be conscious of such abrupt transitions as
now make themselves very commonly felt. More-
over the omissions should spoil as little as possible
the plan of any particular work that is being read.
Probably in some cases it may be found necessary
to substitute carefully prepared summaries, but the
point at which these may be introduced must be
determined with great care. When the style is at
its best it would be disastrous to replace by a sum-
mary, but there are cases where this may be done
without serious loss to the matter in hand. The
difficulty will also be much diminished by length-
ening the lessons, and thus securing that at each
lesson a good deal more will be read.

It will be necessary, if the full benefit is to
be deduced from the historical study, that such
subsidiary aids as can be afforded by a simple list
of dates, by some conception of the lie of the land,
by references to Oriental customs, should be em-
ployed. I have spoken emphatically elsewhere on
the necessity of keeping these things in strict subor-
dination to the main aim, geography, archaeology,
chronology are to be introduced only as they light
up the essential meaning of the Bible. Even the
knowledge of the history is vital only because it is
indispensable to the true understanding of the reli-
gion. The subsidiary studies that I have named

102 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

ought, however, to have room made for them in the
curriculum. At present any systematic treatment is
crowded out because the lesson for the day has to
be read and expounded. Hence the pupils go
through their course without any adequate concep-
tion of events in their relation to each other and to
the whole, because they have no firmly fixed outline
in which they can fix the relative position of events.
And similarly the history would be much illumi-
nated if, in addition to such geographical infor-
mation as might be given bit by bit on individual
lessons, some time were definitely set apart for im-
parting an elementary knowledge of the geography
of Palestine. Outlines of history should, I think,
also be introduced. Here again I am thinking of
nothing elaborate, but something sufficient to help
the pupil to see the bearings on and place in the
general movement of the section he is studying.
I urge further the importance of setting apart
some time for instruction in Christian doctrine. It
is desirable that the pupils should know at least in
an elementary way what their religion is. At pre-
sent they may pick up scraps of doctrine from the
lessons they are taught, but they do not learn them
in their true relations or see them as parts of a great
organism of truth, or apprehend their due propor-
tion and emphasis. Moreover, since they are learnt
only in this accidental way, we have no guarantee
that all of them will be learnt, not even some of
the most vital. That at some point in the course

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 103

we should find a place for apologetics seems to me
necessary. But any full treatment of this should
be left over to the Advanced Course.

And here I should treat the various questions as
they arise in connection with the study of the Bible
so far as this can be done. Thus the whole ques-
tion of miracles and the credibility of the Gospel
history, should spring directly out of the discussion
of the life of Christ. But it is a more perplexing
problem how far in the Upper Middle any treat-
ment of this can be introduced. I am anxious that
those who leave the school before they pass into
the Institute at all should not be at the mercy of
the first plausible sceptic he meets in factory, shop,
or office. Our opponents are leaving no stone un-
turned to undermine belief in the Gospel. Are we
to sit still and do nothing ? We are paying heavily
already the penalty of neglect. I have no doubt
that the true policy is, as far as possible, to teach so
that the objections are felt to be irrelevant when
they come. But this leaves much of the position
still undefended, and I heartily wish that some
attention could be given to providing answers that
will be sufficient for the immediate purpose.

I will not touch in detail on the Golden Texts,
further than to repeat my very strong opinion that
these should be cut away entirely from the lessons
and chosen entirely for their own sake, and carefully
graded in length and arranged in consecutive order.
I know well that we have a multitude of incom-

104 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

patent teachers. Much of what I should include in
a curriculum, they would probably teach as well as
they teach the present course. Other things they
would find more difficult. Naturally the provision
of an improved curriculum implies the provision of
adequate helps. If a teacher is positively incom-
petent to teach some things that we want, we must
make the best of the situation, but not cut down
the standard in the case of those who with such
help as we can render will be quite equal to the
demand. Pessimism is the deadly sin for those
who are servants in the Kingdom of God. We
have to plan for the future, and not heed too much
the lions in the way. I am familiar with the whole
menagerie, but what are we set to guide the
Churches for, if not to lead forlorn hopes and
attempt great things for God ? That He will
fail us if we attempt the apparently hopeless task
to which He calls us is not for one moment to be
entertained. The Christianity of England a quarter
of a century hence depends for its richness, its
depth, its knowledge, and its power largely on the
quality of the teaching in the Sunday Schools
now and for the next few years. And it is to the
Sunday School leaders that God has given the
opportunity of deciding so great an issue.

A S. PEAKE.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 105

III. THE PROBLEM OF LESSON-
SELECTION

In considering, not without anxiety, in what
manner I could most fittingly fulfil the task
allotted to me in connection with this Conference,
I have been led to think that it would best accord
with the object of its promoters, and harmonise
more closely with the deliberative character of the
proceedings, entirely to lay aside the controversial
attitude. Indeed, a somewhat lengthened acquaint-
ance with Sunday School lesson-systems, and the
labour of compiling not a few, have entirely dis-
qualified me from looking upon any or all of
these, with unqualified complacency.

" Our little systems have their day "

and lesson-systems are no exception to the rule ;
only, before they " cease to be," we need to satisfy
ourselves that their successors give promise of an
ampler fruitage, attaining to "something nobler
than before."

I venture, therefore, instead of attempting to
expound the strong points, or extenuate the weak
ones, of the " Uniform " or "International " system,
to submit to this Conference, from a purely

106 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

practical standpoint, what I deem the chief con-
ditions of the problem which we have to face, and
to suggest a few inquiries arising therefrom. It
will then be for minds of wider outlook and richer
furniture to determine the direction in which a
solution may be sought for.

These conditions, then, appear to arrange them-
selves under four principal heads, viz., the Scholar ;
the Home ; the School; and the Teacher.

1. THE SCHOLAR.

Let us realise, as a first condition, that we have
to deal with, say, a million and a half r of children
and young persons, of ages varying from 5 (or
under) to 20 and upwards. A rough classifi-
cation divides them into four sections. Primary,
from infancy to 8 or 9 years old ; Lower Inter-
mediate, 9 to 12 ; Higher Intermediate, 12 to 15 ;
and Senior, above 15 years of age.

An increasing number of primary scholars, and a
considerable proportion of seniors, are now pro-
vided with distinctive courses of lesson-subjects
the latter usually from private sources ; but at
present this re-arrangement is by no means general,
and probably a majority of both these sections
study the lesson allotted to the rest of the
school.

1 This is intentionally under-stated. The home con-
stituency of the Sunday School Union comprises nearly
a million and three-quarters.

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 107

Considering these divisions separately, it must
be noted that the widest diversities prevail among
scholars of the same age and status ; while yet the
conditions seem to render an age-classification
almost unavoidable.

They differ socially: varying from the higher
middle class to the lower ranks of the proletariate.
In neighbouring Sunday Schools we may find, on
the one hand, young people who enjoy the
comforts and luxuries of a well-ordered home, with
educational and other advantages above the average ;
and, on the other, children who are no strangers
to poverty and its vicissitudes, and who, after
struggling through the requirements of an elemen-
tary school, are compelled to undertake the toil
of bread- winning, with the "gyves" of illiteracy
and social inferiority " upon their wrists." And
even in a single school considerable disparity is
always observable.

They differ intellectually: in original capacity,
in mental activities, and hi scholastic attainments.
At one extreme (to borrow the metaphor of the
old Greek teacher) you have the steed that needs
a strong curb ; at the other the dull horse that
requires the spur ; and many shades of difference
between. They differ in power to attend, to
acquire, to retain, to reproduce ; and each group
of pupils forms an educational microcosm.

They differ morally : in temperament, in attitude,
in tendencies. The boy or girl of strong passions

108 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

and little self-control sits side by side with a scholar
of cold and unemotional nature; the earnest, aspiring
lad beside one of low and sordid aims ; the innocent
girl " in whom is no guile," has for fellow pupil one
who has consciously put forth her hand to the tree
of knowledge of good and evil.

They differ religiously. Widely very widely in
religious knowledge; in their outward habits in
respect of religious ordinances ; in their inward
attitude towards revealed truth; in their spiritual
sympathies, and in their personal relations to Christ
and the Gospel. These diversities disclose them-
selves only to the teacher who knows his pupils
and has won their confidence ; and even from him
many secrets of the inner life are often concealed.

2. THE HOME.

It is needless to point out that many, probably
most, of these diversities among Sunday scholars
are traceable to the homes from which they come
to parentage, to domestic companionship, to the
moral and intellectual standard of the family group,
and above all to the moral and religious atmo-
sphere of the home. In the case of some favoured
children, " Heaven lies about " them " in their
infancy " ; in others the religious element is tacitly
excluded from the family life. In some the ghastly
skeleton of moral corruption discloses itself, and
overshadows the domestic hearth ; in others, again,
an empty formalism usurps the place of vital

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 109

Christianity, or else religion exists only in a type
gloomy, narrow, and repulsive to the mind of the
child.

Other conditions of the problem before us are to
be found in

3. THE SCHOOL.

By this, of course, is meant the typical organisa-?
tion of an ordinary Sunday School, without touch-
ing on exceptional cases. Passing over such material
limitations and difficulties as are too often caused
by unsuitable accommodation over-crowded, dark,
or ill-ventilated rooms, and the like there re-
main two features which strike the observer as
peculiar and suggestive. The first is, that the
attendance of the pupils is to a large extent
voluntary the Institution possessing no means of
enforcing it ; the second, that the religious instruc-
tion which forms the essential characteristic of the
Sunday School is imparted only on one day in each
week. Each of these features might supply food
for profitable meditation to the educationalist or
indeed to any Christian mind and heart in which
the best interests of children and youth have a
place. To speak with more precision we may
say, that the time allotted for religious teaching in
Sunday Schools is, for two-thirds of the scholars,
from thirty to forty minutes per week ; and for the
remainder, not more than a single hour.

Between every two such brief periods of instruc-

110 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

tion, therefore, there is an interval of six days
days filled, more or less closely, with multitudinous
occupations " at work, at school, at play." And
yet further the varied and increasing facilities
afforded for Sabbath desecration and week-end
trips in summer, with the inevitable proportion of
inclement Sundays and occasions of personal or
relative illness, and other incidental causes of
irregularity, of necessity cause not infrequent breaks
in the already attenuated curriculum. Such
default amounts on an average to about 15 to 25
per cent, of the total number of scholars on the
books.

We have, lastly, to glance at the conditions of
the problem as they affect

4. THE TEACHER.

It is matter for unqualified rejoicing that the
last few years have witnessed a remarkable and
still increasing desire on the part of Sunday
School teachers, throughout our land, to obtain
a fuller equipment for then* work; so that it
becomes no small difficulty to make fitting or
adequate response to the applications which this
desire is calling forth. I need only refer, in passing,
to the widespread and growing interest awakened
by the lecture Conferences held by my friend
Mr. G. H. Archibald. But as yet undoubtedly
wide diversities exist, and add to the complexity
of the problem before us. Of course this is not

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 111

peculiar to one class of teachers even of religious
teachers ; nor is it likely that it can ever be more
than partially diminished. Our teachers differ
widely, not only in social position and what may
conveniently be included under the head of
" general culture," but also in religious knowledge,
in capacity to acquire in vigour and clearness of
thought, in aptness to communicate, and power to
guide and control ; and, beside all inevitable
diversities of temperament, tone, and manner, they
differ in the chief element of power instrumentally
regarded which we call then* personality, moral
and spiritual.

In thus laying before this Conference a few of
the conditions of the problem which it is called
to deal with, I have dwelt somewhat fully on the
great diversity observable among those, both teachers
and scholars, for whom various courses of Biblical
and theological study are provided. And I venture
to justify this presentment by two considerations :
first, that most of these differences are permanent,
and while improved methods may in time diminish,
they cannot be expected to obliterate them. And
secondly, because, while they are obvious enough
to any one who cares to search for them, they seem
to need exhibiting in bold relief, in detail, and in
their entirety, before any satisfactory legislation
can be proceeded with.

The Rev. E. L. Drawbridge, in his interesting
booklet, " The Training of the Twig," acutely

112 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

observes: "The pace of a [Sunday School] class,
like that of a fleet, is equal to that of its slowest
unit. The rate at which the class, as a whole, can
be taught, is no greater than the rate at which the
slowest member of it can learn." What is true of
the single class is true of the entire school ; and
with regard to the provision of courses of lessons
for instruction, the same rule applies to the entire
Sunday School area.

Bearing these facts in mind, the problem stands
thus : Given a constituency so vast and diversified,
alike among teachers and taught to find the best
practicable course of religious instruction for chil-
dren and youth.

My colleague, Mr. Johnson, has laid before you
the history of a Lesson-System, which for half a
century and more has had a larger number of sup-
porters than any other, before or contemporary
with it, and which has awakened an interest almost
world- wide. It rests on the simple principle of one
lesson-subject for all grades in the school, except
the senior, this exception being rather implied than
expressed. Its leading method, especially since it
became International, has been to provide as topics
of instruction all those portions of the Old and
New Testaments, chiefly narrative, which appear
suited for tuition in an ordinary Sunday School.
" Uniformity," however, can no longer be affirmed
of the system. As far back as the year 1894, both
the American and English Lessons Committees

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 113

recommended and prepared a separate course of
simple subjects for the teaching of Primary or
Infant classes; although in this country the publi-
cation of a Primary list was withheld, owing to the
absence of any demand for such specific provision
for the little ones. More recently, the English Com-
mittee has recommended the adoption, at least for
the present, of the American " Beginners' Course."

It has been tacitly assumed, rather than enun-
ciated, that in the case of the Senior Division
teachers were at liberty to select or compile such
courses of lesson-subjects as seemed best suited to
their pupils. Indeed the marked difference in the
tastes and capacities of the youths and maidens, or
the young men and young women, attending such
classes, rendered it impossible to cater satisfactorily
for all.

Even with these limitations the Uniform system
has been assailed in America by rival editors and
publishers, and (on quite different grounds) by a
few educationalists and academic teachers ; while
in England both the principle itself and the mode
of carrying it into practice in the annual lists of
International Lessons have evoked much severe,
though kindly and sympathetic criticism. Thus
far, the large majority of schools connected with the
Sunday School Union are more or less loyal to the
system (and the " International " sentiment is a
factor not to be overlooked) ; yet symptoms of
secession are not wanting.

9

114 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

In Scotland the dominant method is on similar
lines to our own, the same lesson being graded for
Elementary, Junior and Senior divisions. But the
Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England
passed a resolution under date of June 7, 1905, ex-
pressing their opinion that the time had come for
providing graded subjects, differing according to
the ages and attainments of the scholars.

My friends, Professors Adeney and Peake, desire
reforms in the direction of more strictly consecu-
tive and systematic study ; while the Rev. A. F.
Mitchell would give the widest freedom of selection
to the compilers of schemes of lessons.

In the hope of reaching some common ground of
agreement I would venture to propose a few
questions which the afore-mentioned conditions of
the problem seem to suggest.

1. Does not the rule enunciated by Mr. Mitchell
in his interesting work, " How to Teach the Bible,"
viz., that every scheme of lesson-subjects should be
prepared "from the standpoint of the pupil " and not
from that of the teacher, supply the basal principle
which many have been trying to discover ? Miss
Zimmern, speaking of the marvellous freshness,
simplicity, and naturalness of the " Tales for Chil-
dren" of Maria Edgeworth, remarks that their
" chief charm " consisted in the fact that " she not
only wrote in the language of children, but from
the child's point of view."

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 115

2. Would not lessons arranged on such a prin-
ciple involve the subordination of consecutive-
ness and system to , the higher principle of
adaptation*

3. Is consecutiveness of apprehension on the
scholar's part possible, in any proper sense of the
term, for courses of Bible history when the lessons
are given at intervals of a whole week ? Would
any sense of consecutiveness or cohesion remain in
the mind of an average boy or girl, at the end of
a course of twenty-six or fifty-two lessons, so
given?

4. Does a " system " of lessons, carried over five
or six years, at the rate of one per Sunday, exist
"systematically" anywhere but on paper?

5. Should a course of lessons, of whatever length,
proceed upon an historic or a doctrinal basis ? If
the former., must not the theological teaching be
^systematic ? and if the latter, must not the
Scripture readings be ^consecutive ?

6. Considering that, as we have seen, " the pace
of a class or school is that of its dullest pupil," should
not lessons selected from the scholar's standpoint
possess simplicity as their leading characteristic ?
Dr. Horton recently remarked, at an educational
gathering, " In teaching children religion, we must
teach them the things that can be taken in. What
was required was the intelligent teaching of the
intelligible."

7. Accepting this dictum, which can hardly be

116 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

disputed, would it not be worth consideration
whether its practical adoption in preparing lesson-
schemes would not involve the elimination of
many Scripture narratives (to go no further) which
it has been the custom to include without a
moment's hesitation ? Can all the incidents in the
life and ministry of our Divine Master be taught
from the standpoint of the average boy and girl of
to-day of then- mental outlook and moral and
spiritual sympathies ? And lastly

8. With forty minutes per week at our disposal,
with a shifting population, and irregular atten-
dance ; with the work of life claiming so many even
in early youth ; with crying social evils all around;
with multiplied temptations to godlessness and
vice, to gambling and intemperance, to lying and
dishonesty, to lapses from integrity in the ware-
house and the shop, and from purity of speech and
act in social life is it, or is it not, worth asking
whether a short double course of lessons for Higher
and Lower Intermediate, on the fundamental truths
of our faith, and the duties associated therewith
the gospel of our salvation and the life of disciple-
ship repeated, if necessary, every year, or every
two years at most would not more directly and
more effectively meet the moral and spiritual needs
of boys and girls from eight to fifteen, as we have
them in our Sunday Schools, than more ambitious,
attempts to compass the whole course of sacred his-
tory, or the entire circle of theological doctrine ?

THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS 117

9. And, for the requirements and capabilities of
our youths and maidens of fifteen years and up-
wards, could not three or four Advanced Courses,
such as those advocated at this Conference, but of
different degrees of advancement, be prepared and
placed at the service of teachers and leaders of
"Senior," "Guild," and "Institute" classes, by
whatever name they may be designated, for selec-
tion according to the capacities and attainments
of their pupils ?

Would not such a differentiating of educational
pabulum be more likely to preserve our Interme-
diate and Junior scholars from that mental dys-
pepsia which too often has resulted from the prema-
ture administration of unduly " strong meat" ?

I would close with an Eastern apologue. In a
certain city a plague was raging. A great doctor
came from afar, and brought an elixir which was
a certain specific for the malady. The local physi-
cians approved and accepted the remedy, but
instead of dispensing it to their patients, they fell to
disputing about the shape of the bottles in which
the elixir should be stored. And while they de-
bated, the people died.

W. H. GROSER.

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE AND
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

" I "HE Christian Church is at present in great
JL need of broadly cultured men to deal with
the problem of religious education. Our ideas on
the subject are so varied as to be almost chaotic.
In Germany the religious instruction hi Protestant
schools, though very elaborate, has proved in-
effective in quickening the spiritual life of the
nation ; in Britain the present condition is
transitional; while in the New World the complete
secularisation of schools is causing grave concern
to those whose chief interest lies in the moral
welfare of the people.

What of the future? At present it is impossible
to distinguish any clear and consistent guidance in
the multitude of voices, but two convictions are
coming out hi unmistakable tones first, that
religious character must be instilled by a living
faith embodied in a teacher who can win the
respect of the child ; and, second, that the Church,

118

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 119

as the highest educational factor in the building of
the character of the people, must be intensely
interested in the school problem. Never again will
the official management of the day-school be handed
over to the Church as an organisation, but the real
power of moral and spiritual direction should never
depart unless she fail to commend her gospel to the
intellectual leaders of Christendom.

I believe that the theological colleges of the
Churches have it in their power to do more for the
religious education of the Christian world than any
other institution, because they send forth a steady
stream of highly trained men, who may become
sympathetic and competent observers of present
needs, and whose opinion, if well founded, has
great weight. Further, the minister not only
moulds the thoughts of the Church, but influences
the home, which is an immense educational power.
By arousing the parents to a sense of the over-
whelming importance of religious training in the
home through life and precept, he is setting in
motion most potent forces for the building of
character. Then, in fulfilment of his function as a
teacher, the minister must direct the education of
his teachers in the Sunday School, and have over-
sight of its work.

In view of this, it is reasonable to look to our
theological colleges for guidance on a question
which to-day pre-eminently requires judicial and
well-informed treatment. Is all the present con-

120 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

troversy about religious education in the day-school
mere irrational clamour? If something real lies
behind it, we must prove to the world that our
interest in the young is of a competent character,
and justify our right to be heard by training men
who have opinions worth listening to, instead of
allowing the Church to be represented by those
who fill our ears with lamentations because they
cannot get what is educationally impossible. Let
us be in earnest and win the respect of edu-
cationalists, who are learning to agree upon the
best training on the secular side. We shall always
be gladly listened to if we understand the meaning
of religious education, which, unhappily, too often
we do not.

2. WHAT THE COLLEGES MAY Do.

It is a common opinion that the theological
colleges are strongholds of conservatism. We are
sometimes told by those who profess to regard our
welfare rather than our feelings, that the forces of
the other professions are marching forward well
equipped to possess the twentieth century in the
name of truth, but the theologians, once doughty
warriors, abide in their tents where they were
pitched generations ago. Whether this be true or
not, we may get a modicum of comfort from the
fact that reformers are for ever scrutinising the
curricula of the schools, the universities, and the
professional colleges. As a rule, it is in the name

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 121

of the practical and common-sense. And revision
may be helpful, perhaps nowhere more so than in
the theological college. When the criticism is
directed towards the removal of the unpractical, it
must always be heeded, for the average college is
not intended to produce specialists in any branch
of theological discipline, but to train men who will
be preachers, teachers, and pastors for all sorts and
conditions throughout the length and breadth of
the land.

Too often the breath of the workaday world
hardly stirs the quiet academic retreats, while the
Church outside is shaken by blast upon blast. The
privilege of the clergy is being withdrawn and the
pew is not docile. The people are questioning
the value of the Church as an organisation, and
demand provision for their deep-felt wants, or they
will turn elsewhere for food. Manifestly the theo-
logical college is challenged to produce the type of
man who will be keenly alive to the needs of his
situation, but it is no easy matter to provide
spiritual directors for a nation. Assuredly every
failure is not to be laid to the account of an
antiquated curriculum. The most ideal college
cannot turn a dead stick into a living tree whose
leaf will not wither and which bringeth forth
fruit in its season. Nor does the solution lie by
any means wholly in a larger infusion of the
"practical." Our aim is to produce men whose
discipline will have made them practical. Now,

122 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

what is this discipline ? From one point of view a
theological college should be an integral part of
the university system. Religion in particular the
Christian religion is objectively studied in its
theoretical bases and historical manifestations,
under the intellectual ideals that prevail in the arts
class-rooms. For the most part such methods are
an unadulterated blessing, because the principles of
literary interpretation, historical discipline, and the
philosophic temper, when applied to religious
thought and experience, tend to intellectual
honesty and self-criticism, which are essential in a
minister who is to guide the religious life of the
modern world.

But, also, the theological college is a professional
school to train students for the work of the
ministry. No mere scholar with his exclusive
academic distinction, will reach the heart of the
people. That secret is with the wise man who can
turn his learning to the advantage of the average
person. A system of theological training is ineffi-
cient if it does not help the student to grasp the
fundamental necessity of knowing men.

(a) CHANGE OF EMPHASIS.

There is need of readjustment in the relation of
the theoretical and the humanistic sides of the
theological curriculum, so that the latter may not
stand so constantly in the shade. Three elements
enter into the full function of the modern minister

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 123

prophecy, teaching, and pastoral oversight. Of
the first two, prophecy is more occasional, teaching
more constant. Special knowledge of moral or
spiritual conditions may from time to time kindle
prophecy in the preacher, but the class-room
ordinarily will neither create nor perhaps sustain
the prophet. He is the inspired man. On the
other hand, the conditions of the modern pulpit
compel the minister to expect his most enduring
results from his charisma of teaching. It will
remain a moot question whether the pulpit or the
pastoral function is the more important ; in fact, it
is impossible to evaluate them severally ; but too
great emphasis cannot be laid upon the fact that
the minister is a physician of souls, and must
thoroughly understand the nature of those whom
he is to succour. He will require, of course, to
know personally those who are committed to his
care, but this empirical knowledge is not fully
effective (just as it holds true of the physician of
the body) unless it is based upon a knowledge of
the growth and characteristics of the religious con-
sciousness. This aspect of knowledge has recently
received much attention, and of necessity will be
emphasised more fully in the training for the
ministry.

(b) READJUSTMENTS IN THE CURRICULUM.

The only satisfactory method of impressing upon
students the immense importance of religious

124 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

education, in order that they may go forth imbued
with the conviction that educational leadership is
incumbent upon them is to prescribe the study of
the psychology of religion, especially of the child,
and the principles of teaching. I have said the
psychology of the child because it is difficult for
the mature mind to think itself back over the
process through which it has reached its present
development, and because the subtle religious and
moral phases which become permanent in character
occur before manhood. Our Master-Teacher has
said that the law of the Kingdom is first the blade,
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear the
process following the divine law of the seasons.
Likewise, in the coming of the Kingdom in the
individual life there are divine laws, and it is bad
spiritual husbandry to be ignorant of the seasons
for planting, the times and methods of culture, and
to try to reverse the constitution according to
which God has ordered that our characters must
grow. The soil may be good enough, but if it is
tilled on unnatural principles the harvest will be
small.

Unfortunately our methods of religious educa-
tion are too often hopelessly unscientific. We
profess to believe that conversion is entirely a
supernatural fact, but we throw obstacles in the
way of the Spirit's working by neglecting to
observe patiently the divine laws of human nature.
The minister who understands child nature will

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 125

not endeavour to deal with every age in exactly
the same way. The simplicity of childhood, won
by grace and virtue in the concrete, and the storm
and stress of adolescence, in which doubts and
fears and ideals are conflicting for permanent
mastery, are not to be influenced by the same
presentation of truth. Let us avoid blundering
empiricism as far as in us lies. Even with all our
acquired skill we shall have enough errors to
lament.

Along with psychology there will naturally be
found in a theological course training in pedagogi-
cal method. The best teachers are born, but the
average person may be wonderfully improved by
sound instruction and practice. No one can secure
the continuous attention of children unless he has
either consciously or by intuition mastered the
fundamental laws of teaching. And this once
done is a permanent and invaluable possession.
The student who has learned to handle a class of
children, and to instil into their hearts a suitable
lesson, has been set far forward on his way towards
interesting and moving the mature mind; for he
can strip the truth bare and reclothe it skilfully
as an intelligible friend for every age. Even for
the preacher ability to adapt his message to the
children is supremely valuable. Here in truth a
little child shall lead them.

A further improvement might be made in
methods of presenting Scripture. The Bible is

126 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

taught to-day in our colleges with a discernment
never hitherto equalled, and the delicate but
necessary process of sifting the essential from the
non-essential in the expression of our faith is being
wrought out with great knowledge under the
leadership of devout and sober men. But the very
success with which these studies have been prose-
cuted has facilitated an improvement in adapting
the messages of Scripture to the comprehension of
children. The historical method of interpretation
has revealed the rich variety of the Bible and its
wealth as a storehouse of human experience, from
which every phase of human life may be illustrated.
Yet the divers portions in their divers manners are
found to blend wonderfully into consistent truth
concerning God and man. In our colleges the
Bible is studied almost entirely from the technical
point of view, minute attention being paid to
textual problems, the literary structure of the
books, the detailed exegesis of selected portions,
and the history of interpretation. All this is
admittedly valuable, but it should be supplemented
by courses dealing with the scope of the Bible as a
whole, in which the purpose of the books, their
contents and teaching, would be emphasised. This
would be a serviceable means for training students
to adapt Bible truth to the young, and generally
for popular interpretation. The Bible will not
retain its hold upon the people unless the colleges
produce interpreters with insight and adaptive gifts.

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 127

The time at my disposal has not allowed me to
gather statistics from any colleges, but in many
institutions both in Canada and in the United
States the curriculum of theological study has been
modified to provide for religious pedagogy. Where
associated universities have instruction in educa-
tion, attendance on it may be made compulsory by
the theological colleges, or the proof of normal
training and of actual teaching in the public
schools of the country may be accepted as an
equivalent. It is not improbable that before long
the psychology of the child and education will be
recognised as equally essential with philosophy or
social science for entrance upon the study of
theology. In this direction the hope of the future
seems to he, for the problems of religious education
will not approach solution until the Churches are
led by a ministry upon whom its burden rests
heavily, and who are able to distinguish between
the essential and the non-essential, the possible and
the impossible.

(c) CLOSER RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNIVER-
SITIES AND THE NORMAL SCHOOLS.

One would also hope that among the larger and
the better endowed colleges special courses for lay
workers may be offered, as, for example, is the
case already in Union Seminary, New York, and
the Hartford Theological Seminary. Possibly in
the future a new teaching order in the ministry

128 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

may arise, whose duty it will be to undertake daily
religious work among the children of the city
schools, their speciality being as fully recognised
as that of a teacher of language or science, though
their support would be undertaken by the co-
operation of the Protestant Churches. At present
a more practical course would be to get Biblical
literature recognised as optional in the arts classes
of the universities and in the normal colleges of
the State. The present methods of Bible study
make affiliation with non-denominational universi-
ties and theological colleges quite feasible. Were
the theological colleges to offer attractive lectures,
free from the technicalities of introduction and
exegesis, they would be attended by a large
number of those looking forward to the teaching
profession, whose influence, direct or indirect,
would help to solve the question of religious
education. At the same time, such courses would
materially benefit the average theological student.

(d) EXTENSION WORK.

One other development may be mentioned which
has been tested, and which may be of service for a
time in some localities. I refer to Extension
lectures on the principles of teaching and Biblical
study delivered by members of the faculty in well-
selected centres. They will arouse interest in the
Sunday School and direct the attention of the
Churches to its importance. Here again simplicity,

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 120

concreteness, and human interest are indispensable
to success, but the very effort to adapt the results
of scholarship to popular understanding will react
most beneficially upon the more advanced study in
the class-room. The popularisation of knowledge
is an effective means of readjusting values.

It is a matter of profound regret that the
indifference of theological schools to the claims of
the young on the minister, except for some per-
functory reference in "practical theology," has
diverted the attention of many students from this
vitally important department of church life. On
this account the advances that have been made
in organised Sunday School work are due to
the zeal of worthy laymen and sympathetically
disposed ministers in non-denominational societies.
However excellent and deserving of the Churches'
thanks such work undoubtedly is, no Church can
afford to transfer the educational leadership of its
youth to others, and the theological colleges hold

the key to the situation.

R. A. FALCONER.

10

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE AND THE
SUNDAY SCHOOL

I AM very thankful for the opportunity of
saying something to my brethren in England
regarding the relations of the theological college
to the Sunday School. Naturally, this must be
said in the light of experience in America ; and
I am aware, of course, of the danger which there
is lest recommendations from one country to
another should be at the very outset treated with
generally unconscious hostility. It is by no sense
with a feeling that any superiority attaches to
the Christian work of that country that I shall
attempt to describe our experience in the matter
before us. There is much which the larger
theological institutions of America have yet to
learn from the smaller colleges of the old country.
A larger and more generous programme does not
always mean more thorough work and better train-
ing for the ministry. But now to the facts of the
case.

130

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 131

First. Within the last ten years there has been
a very widespread interest aroused in what is
popularly known as Bible Study. This has been
quickened by the enormous growth of Young
Men's Christian Associations, and by the vogue
won for itself by the summer assembly type of
school, which is often described as a Chautauqua.
As these institutions have disseminated the feeling
that the Bible ought to be more widely and more
intelligently studied by private individuals, the
Churches have been aroused to ask whether it is
not their function to provide for this loud and ever
louder demand.

Second. The Sunday School movement in this
country has, especially under the inspiration and
direction of the International Sunday School
Association, resulted in a very large increase in
the number of Sunday School scholars. Many
Churches in northern cities count the number of
their scholars by several hundreds. This develop-
ment in mere numbers has made necessary the
more thorough organisation of the work, and
has at last brought a large number of Churches
to the point at which they feel bound to pay their
superintendents, and sometimes also to pay the
head of one or other of the departments in the
Sunday School. In my own correspondence I
receive every year an increasing number of applica-
tions from ministers of various denominations,
and in various parts of the country, asking me to

132 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

name persons who are fitted to do pastoral work
and to superintend the Sunday School, giving the
bulk of their time to the latter form of ministry.
The number of such appointments is, then, in-
creasing year by year, and those who make them
demand that candidates shall either have proved
their capacity in years of such service, or that they
shall come certificated from a school where they
had special preparation for it.

Third. Again we must take account of the
fact that the conscience of the Church is being
roused as it realises increasingly the significance
of the complete separation between Church and
State, which in so large a measure extends through-
out the country, even to the public school. If
in many schools the custom still survives of daily
reading a portion of Scripture and offering prayer,
that religious exercise is not intended to partake
of the nature of instruction ; and there remain
very few public schools anywhere in America
which allow real religious instruction to be given.
If the Church is to do this work, it is evident
that those whom it appoints as teachers must
not be unworthy of comparison with the trained
secular teachers in the public schools. Every
one recognises that if the teachers of the Bible
and of Christian truth are on the whole inferior
to the day-school teachers, that will tend to awaken
contempt for religion in the minds of the children.
There is spreading through the land a loud outcry,

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 133

therefore, for a higher grade of Sunday School
work. This cry is uttered not merely or even
mainly by those who lay more stress on the in-
tellectual than the spiritual elements in religious
instruction. It is made in the very name of
spirituality by those who recognise the facts
stated above. It is not that the schools are in-
tended to aim less at the awakening of faith and
the stimulating of devotion, but that this end
cannot be achieved if the degree of intelligence
possessed by the teacher and the skill exercised by
him are not of a high quality.

Fourth. The influence of the preceding facts
has resulted in the creation of several institutions
in different parts of the country which aim
explicitly at training men and women for Christian
work other than that of the ministry, and more
especially for Sunday School work. This is done
by the Bible Training School in Chicago, by Dr.
W. W. White's school in New York City, and I
see that just this season a similar school has been
opened in Boston. But the most interesting, and
I am fain to believe the most significant, of these
schools is that which has been in Hartford for
some years, and which is known as the Hartford
School of Religious Pedagogy. This began as
a school for Christian workers in the city of Spring-
field, Massachusetts, and then was known for
several years as the Bible Normal School before
it assumed its present somewhat uncouth name.

134 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

Its body of teachers has comprised several men
who are recognised authorities on their own
special lines, who have had the offers of attractive
appointments elsewhere, but who have given
themselves, even at great self-sacrifice, to this
task from the conviction ;,that in this way they
can best serve their country and the Kingdom of
God. The permanent instructors include a pro-
fessor of New Testament, assisted by a competent
teacher in the Old Testament, a professor of
Psychology, who is one of the leading investigators
in America into child psychology, and a professor
of Pedagogy and Sunday School Organisation.
As I am sending with this article some copies of
the calendar of this school, I need not enter into
particulars ; but the following general statements
it may be well to make here:

The school aims at doing something more than
merely -the superficial work of popular instruction,
whether in the Scriptures or in the methods of
Sunday School teaching. The students are brought
down to scientific method, are taught to investi-
gate the history of the Sunday School and to study
the varieties of organisation in the different
Churches. They are also made to feel the signifi-
cance and importance of their function as teachers
by lectures in the history of teaching and instruc-
tion in the fundamental principles of education
as such. The courses in psychology include
instruction in the outlines of general psychology

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 135

and a most thorough discussion of the phenomena
connected with the growth of the mind through
childhood and youth into maturity. Deductions
are, of course, drawn or suggestions made as to
the best manner of adapting the material given
in Scripture to the various stages which are thus
disclosed in the development of the individual.
That this work is appreciated, that the need for
it is very great, may be proved by such facts
as these : That the teachers of this school are in
great demand for lectures and addresses in various
parts of the country wherever religious education
is being discussed; that the number and quality
of the students are improving every year. We
have in residence this year nearly fifty young men
and women the young men being comparatively
scarce who have devoted themselves to the
religious education of the young. Many of these
are persons not only of sincere piety, but of high
intelligence. Some are graduates of the best
known colleges, and the large majority are looking
forward especially to service in the Sunday School
field. And yet we are not able to supply all the
workers for whom ministers and Churches make
application to this institution year by year.

Fifth. The theological college, or seminary
as it is called in this country, is also awaking
to the needs of the hour in the matter especially
of Sunday School education. Some of the older
seminaries keep themselves aloof from actual

136 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

participation in the work, but even they have
been compelled to put into their courses of
instruction the subject of Sunday School work
and the relations of the pastor thereto. In most
seminaries a considerable amount of time is given
to this subject. To some extent this movement
has been stimulated by the fact that where these
seminaries have existed in large cities the
professors have found themselves drawn into
active Sunday School work, and have, in some
instances, occupied the position of superintendent
of Sunday Schools for many years, and with'great
success. In other cases they have taught Bible-
classes in connection with their own Churches.
In still other cases they have been led by the
pressure of the Churches around the seminary
to offer evening courses of lectures to the Sunday
School teachers ; and in some cases have formed
large and influential classes of this kind.

One of the most significant of all these labours
was that carried on by the late President W. R.
Harper, of the University of Chicago, along with
Professors E. D. Burton and Shailer Mathews,
the well-known New Testament scholars.
President Harper assumed the superintendentship
of a Sunday School near the University, and,
with the assistance of the two whom I have named
and others, organised the Sunday School on a
unique plan, and for years saw the work being
done by such able coadjutors as these with great

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 137

zeal and success. Out of their experience there
has grown a remarkable series of books published
by the Press of the University of Chicago,
providing studies in Scripture and various aspects
of the Sunday School and its work.

Several of the theological seminaries notably
Union Seminary, New York, and the Chicago
Theological Seminary, with which I was formerly
connected have found it necessary to establish
adjunct schools or institutes for the purpose of
training Sunday School teachers. This has been
done at considerable cost, because they see how
great is the field, and how real is their duty in
the matter. Each of these seminaries is reaching
every year a larger constituency, but the largest
service of this kind is being rendered by Union
Seminary, New York, where many thousands
of Sunday School teachers are formed every year
into classes, where a large amount of literature
is printed and circulated among the schools, and
where continually the work rises in quality as
well as extends numerically.

Hartford Theological Seminary some years ago
mainly because several of its professors were
teaching in Sunday Schools, and were led to very
practical views of the situation gave a large place
to the interests of Sunday School work in its
regular curriculum. Finding that it was not
easy for already burdened teachers to add this
to their labours, the seminary invited the school

138 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

which I have already described to remove from
Springfield to Hartford, on the understanding
that the two should work together. They are
distinct institutions, but their co-operation is both
real and fruitful for each. A large number of
the seminary students every year elect courses
in the School of Religious Pedagogy, and are thus
better equipped for taking charge of Churches
where the Sunday School opportunity is large.

In conclusion, I may be permitted to say that
it seems to me to be in the highest degree desirable
that all theological colleges or seminaries should
recognise the wonderful change through which the
Church is passing, partly through the separation
of Church and State, partly through the spread of
popular education, partly through the increased
appetite on the part of Christian people for a
knowledge of the Bible and understanding of
Christian truth. This undoubtedly means the
multiplication of the educational functions of the
Church. Men trained for the regular ministry
are only in rare cases possessed of such original
genius as to see the significance of the situation,
and in still fewer cases able to take hold of it
successfully. Moreover, the work is becoming
so much differentiated, it demands so much new
organisation adapted to its own ends, that a new
class of teachers, as well as a new grade of teaching
must be created. It would be surely a disaster
to the college itself to keep its students back

THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE 139

from contact with this larger view and personal
acquaintance with the principles that are involved.
On the other hand, if the colleges will lead in the
matter, our experience in this country is that
the Churches will be more quickly aroused to the
situation, and the colleges thus will be brought
into new and more varied and fruitful relations
with the Churches. If there is not much en-
thusiasm at present anywhere for ministerial
education in itself, there is much real enthusiasm
for general religious education, and especially for
Sunday School work. The colleges which can
put themselves in living connection with that
enthusiasm whose tide is rising so grandly year
by year, will attract some of the enthusiasm for
their own work, and their leaders, teachers, and
students will receive afresh the affection and the
confidence of their constituency. Nothing better
could happen for the theological colleges of any
Christian land than that they should become the
homes and centres where men and women are
being trained in large numbers for all forms and
degrees of that service to the Kingdom of Christ
which, while it forsakes not the preaching of the
Gospel, seeks to do it by means of education,
in the class-room, no less than from the pulpit.

W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE.

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER
TRAINER

r I "HERE is no more hopeful sign in the growing
-L agitation for Sunday School reform that is
now rising than the widespread perception of the
necessity for the adequate training of the teachers.
This implies no reflection on the self-sacrificing
devotion of the noble army of labourers on the
great field of England in the making. The more
earnest their zeal is, the more reason have we for
seeing that it is directed towards the largest
fruitfulness. The time has gone when it could
be imagined that effective work might be carried
on without adequate preparation. It is true that
the teacher who is engaged in business during the
week cannot be expected to acquire the technical
skill of the day-school master or mistress who has
been specially educated for the profession. Never-
theless, he has to deal with scholars who know
what good teaching is by their week-day expe-
rience, and who, reasonably or unreasonably, judge
him accordingly. The amateur orchestra can
never come up to the professional ; but people

140

THE MINISTER AS TEACHEB TRAINEE 141

who are accustomed to good music will not endure
it unless it is fairly skilful. Thus the raising of
the professional standard necessarily affects the
amateur. We cannot help the fact, however
much we may complain of its injustice.

We are sometimes reminded that the Sunday
School teacher has a great make-weight in his
personal influence. The Sunday School is not,
like the day-school, merely an educational insti-
tution. It is the Church of the young. Its chief
aim is spiritual rather than intellectual. Here
character counts for more than skill, and love and
sympathy and a spiritual atmosphere are more
valuable than exact knowledge and the art of
imparting it. If this were not so the Sunday
School would have failed long ago. But we must
not allow such consideration important as it is
to excuse indolence, slackness, or incompetence.
The spiritual realm is so large that it includes
the intellectual, claiming to enlist this in its service.
If you give all to God if you say sincerely,
"Take my life" you must mean, among other
things, "Take my intellect." At all events, in
the present day, when so many earnest souls are
perplexed by anxious thoughts on religion, the
spiritual guide is required to help the mind as
well as the hearts of those whom he is called
upon to lead. The very word "teacher" is a
misnomer if genuine teaching is not aimed at.
The true teacher does more than teach; yet he

142 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

teaches. But the teacher must be taught. That
is the point at which we have now arrived.

The Sunday School Union has long recognised
the necessity for the training of teachers, and has
made repeated efforts to promote this end. It
carries on examinations for teachers in several
subjects, both theoretical and practical, which are
of such a standard that any teacher of fair intelli-
gence and education, after due preparation, need
not shrink from facing them, while they are
sufficiently advanced to make the winning of a
certificate of success in them a worthy object of
ambition. But how small is the number of teachers
who even enter for these examinations ! They do
not touch the vast majority.

Then the Sunday School Union institutes train-
ing classes. Central classes are held at the Old
Bailey, and local classes in many places up and
down the land. College professors are often
engaged in conducting such classes. I may be
permitted to say that my own college has insti-
tuted evening lectures for Sunday School teachers,
and also a Greek Testament class in conjunction
with the Manchester Sunday School Union. Other
colleges are helping in various ways. Still, with
all these efforts we only reach the fringe of the
task. The great body of Sunday School teachers
is untouched by them. To be frank, we must
confess that the results of such efforts are very
disappointing. We may count our attendants at

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER TRAINER 143

the classes and lectures by the score or even in
some cases by the hundred. But the remaining
thousands of teachers in the area from which we
draw are unaffected. Besides, those who come
are the intellectually elite. We have University
graduates attending our Manchester classes. It
is interesting to the lecturer to see such a culti-
vated audience. Meanwhile the multitude of the
less instructed teachers are outside this select
movement. Evidently we need to broaden the
area of our efforts immensely if we are to influence
the teaching in our schools as a whole.

The plain fact is that the bulk of the teachers
cannot or will not come to training centres. The
common difficulty is that they are already so much
engaged in various meetings and classes at their
own churches that they cannot find the evening
for this extra. It is easy to reply that it is not
an extra, but a matter of primary importance.
The multitude of more pressing engagements is
not accepted as an excuse for neglect of the
weekly practice by the members of a choir,
because that is set before them as of paramount
importance. We can always find time for what
most interests us. Still, we must face the facts;
and everybody must admit that they are as I have
stated. Perhaps the ultimate explanation is that
there is a good deal of human nature in all of us
even in Sunday School teachers. Yet one further
difficulty must be recognised. The old-established

144 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

teacher, with his settled habits, is disinclined to go
to school and begin over again with new notions
and methods. He is hi his groove, and the longer
he is there the deeper he wears it, and therefore
the harder he finds it to move from it. He objects
to the jolting of innovation.

Such being the state of the case, how are we to
adjust ourselves to it? It is granted that the
training of teachers is now more needed than ever ;
it is admitted that hitherto all our efforts to meet
this need have met with only a minute minimum
of success. Consequently it is plain to-day that
we must try other methods. What are these
to be?

Here I would lay down three propositions :
1. The training must precede the teaching. We
cannot expect to do much in the training of those
who are already engaged in the work of the school.
You cannot drill the soldier on the battlefield ; he
must learn his manoeuvres as a recruit. Let our
present teachers have all the help we can give
them, both in the preparation of the weekly lesson
and towards their own personal culture. Still, our
main effort must be directed to the preparation
of the new teachers of the future. We have dis-
cussed this matter long enough to have produced
a whole crop of teachers by now if we had been
doing the work instead of merely talking about it.
What we want is the establishment of classes of
young people who are in training for becoming

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER TRAINER 145

Sunday School teachers. Such young people
should have more leisure for the study involved,
since they will not be at the same time burdened
with the care of classes and the preparation of
lessons. The suggestion is at least logical. It
is reasonable to learn how to do a thing before
you begin to do it. A mistress would not engage
as a cook a girl who had never been in the kitchen
with the intention of sending her to a cookery
class, but meanwhile entrusting her with the pre-
paration of the family meals. Are we to be
more careful about our dinners than we are about
the religion of our children? It is appalling to
think how people are set in care of young souls,
charged with the tremendous responsibility of
infusing into them the first formative ideas about
God and Christ and eternal things, without any
preparation for the task or any test of fitness,
simply because there are classes in lack of teachers,
or even in order to find work for these people, who,
perhaps, as recent comers in the congregation, are
to be made at home there by this means. I hope
that the time is not far distant when we shall not
dream of appointing Sunday School teachers in
this haphazard fashion, when no new teacher will
be appointed without some previous testing as to
knowledge and capacity as well as Christian
character.

When I speak in this way I am met by the
reply that we must utilise the material we have

11

146 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODEEN METHODS

at hand. It is difficult to get teachers at all. If
we make the standard too high we shall have
fewer than ever. I do not admit that excuse ;
for, first, I would be content with fewer good
teachers and a smaller school really taught, in
preference to having a mob of children ineffec-
tually handled, and, second my present point
I would make it a chief work to train young
people to become effective teachers.

2. This training must be carried on in the
separate schools and churches. It cannot be done
in great centres. We have long tried that method,
and it has proved to be wholly inadequate. If we
are to cover the ground we must have a separate
teachers' training class for each school. Or, if this
is impractical in the smaller schools, at most two
or three in close neighbourhood might combine to
form such a class. This class would always be in
evidence. All the scholars would know of it. It
would be the aim of earnest teachers to provide
candidates for membership. Young people could
be encouraged to regard it as an object of ambition
to be promoted to a class which would contain
the pick of the school. In such a class there would
be a grounding in the first principles of our
Christian faith ; a study of the Bible as a whole
and book by book ; a consideration of the eternal
questions and also of the living problems of the
hour ; a clear exposition of Church principles ; an
explanation of the principles and art of teaching.

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER TRAINER 147

This would be our recruiting ground, from which
duly prepared teachers could be drawn as required.
3. The minister should regard it as his high
privilege to institute and conduct such a class.
Here I reach the special point to which all that
I have said hitherto leads up. When we advocate
the establishment of a teachers' training class we
are commonly met with the difficulty that there
is nobody in the Church able and willing to
conduct such a class. Certainly it demands special
aptitude. The leader of the class must be a
trained scholar, "apt to teach." In our colleges
young men pass through years of study and train-
ing preparing them for the ministry. Thus they
should become themselves highly-trained teachers ;
thus they should be able to train and teach others.
I am aware that this remark does not apply to
every minister; and while many Churches choose
their pastors solely with regard to pulpit eloquence
there will be many ministers whom we cannot ask
to conduct teachers' training classes. But such a
ground of choice is narrow and in a way selfish.
The larger ministry of to-day demands more
varied gifts and attainments. A duly equipped
minister should have something more than the
capacity of producing two attractive discourses
every Sunday. Those discourses will be all the
more real and biting if the preacher is in living
contact with the freshest young minds in his
Church, threshing out with them the difficulties

148 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

that he sees they are feeling, or leading them
into the truths that he finds they are able to
receive. The training class will need very
thorough attention and demand much from the
minister in time and thought and study. But it
will be worth all the effort that he puts into it.
I do not shrink from making this demand on
my brother ministers. I know that some of them
are already overworked, and that any conscientious
minister has really no limits to what he might
undertake if only he had sufficient time and
strength. Among the multitudinous and distract-
ing claims on the ministry in the present day the
strongest and most energetic must make a selec-
tion, must pass a self-denying ordinance, must be
able to say "No" to many demands which in
themselves are very urgent. It is a question of
comparative merits and claims. The wise minister
will desire to make the best use of his time. "Are
there not twelve hours in the day?" Let him
divide out his hours proportionately to the value
of what has to be done. While he is doing this
I would put in a plea for a very prominent place
for the training of his own Church and School
workers, even at the cost of much else that in
itself seems very desirable. Outside work in the
town must be cut down, for it is certainly sub-
ordinate to the paramount necessity of securing
and maintaining the efficiency of the nursery of
the Church.

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER TRAINER 149

I am inclined to think that there is an un-
businesslike lack of economy in much ministerial
work. Churches expect their ministers to waste
their time on many things of minor importance.
While real pastoral visitation is invaluable, an
immense amount of time is frittered away in the
useless amenities of social life. It is nice to have
the minister presiding at a literary or musical
entertainment, but is such a function for a moment
comparable with the serious work of grinding the
swords for battle? The minister would greatly
multiply his own influence by gathering about
him a body of trained disciples whom he could
trust to do serious work. Thus he would utilise
his own stores of knowledge. Much of the
acquisition of college studies is not found to have
a direct bearing on the preparation for the pulpit ;
but a great deal of it would be most serviceable
in the teachers' training class. Further, by con-
ducting such a class the minister would keep
himself in living contact with the work of the
School.

I have heard ministers superciliously denouncing
what they call " Sunday School theology." Whose
fault is it that the theology of the Sunday School
differs from that of the pulpit ? This comes of the
minister's aloofness from the School. He lets it go
its own way without his effectual aid, and then
perhaps complains that it is out of sympathy with
him. He would not have had much reason for

150 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

that complaint if he had shown more practical
sympathy with the School. If the teachers were
the men and women whom he had trained the
intimate relations of the training class and its
leader would have resulted in unity of spirit in
Church and School.

I have one final suggestion to make. Some
men are born preachers ; others are born teachers.
There is room for a special order of ministers
the ministry of the teacher. Perhaps this could
only be maintained in the larger Churches. It
would well pay a strong Church to engage as a
second minister a man of thorough University
culture who might not be gifted with the sonorous
eloquence that catches the ear of the multitude,
but who would be " apt to teach," and who should
be devoted to the training of the Sunday School
teachers, lay preachers, and other Church workers.
Or a group of Churches might employ such a man
between them.

WALTER F. ADENEY.

REPRESENTATIVES ATTENDING THE

CONFERENCE,

(The Names are arranged in Alphabetical order.}

ACKLAND, Mr. T. GANS, F.I.A., Statistical Hon. Secretary of

the Sunday School Union.

ADAMS, Prof. JOHN, M.A., B.Sc,, Professor of Education in

the University of London, and Prin-
cipal of London Day Training College.

*ADENEY, Prof. W. F., M.A., D.D., Principal of Lancashire

Independent College.

The Ven. ARCHDEACON of LONDON (Rev. W. Macdonald

Sinclair, D.D.)

ARCHIBALD, Mr. G. HAMILTON, Lecturer on Child Study, and

Extension Lecturer of the Sunday
School Union.

*BELSEY, Mr. F. F., J.P., Chairman of Council of the Sun-
day School Union. President of the
World's First Sunday School Conven-
tion, 1889.

BONNER, Rev. CAREY, General Secretary of the Sunday

School Union, London.

CLEMENTS, Mr. FRANK, Financial Hon. Secretary, the Sun-
day School Union.

CRADDOCK, Rev. R. E., General Sunday School Secretary of

the Bible Christian Methodist Church.

CROWTHER, Mr. JAS. S., Hon. Corresponding Secretary of

The Sunday School Union, and Secre-
tary of the Training College and
Examination Committee.

151

152 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

*CULLEY, Rev. ROBERT, Secretary of Wesleyan Methodist

Sunday School Union.

DAVISON, Rev. W. T., M.A., D.D., Professor at Richmond

College, and President Wesleyan
Methodist Conference, 1901.
DAWSON, Rev. H., M.A., Secretary of the Church of England

Sunday School Institute.
*GARVIE, Rev. A. E., M.A., D.D., Principal of New College,

London.
GIBSON, Rev. J. MONRO, M.A., D.D., LL.D., Ex-Moderator

Presbyterian Church of England.
*GREEN, Rev. S. W., M.A., Professor of New Testament

Greek in Regent's Park College.
*GROSER, Mr. W. H., B.Sc., Hon. Literary Secretary of the

Sunday School Union.
HEALING, Mr. THOS., Formerly one of H.M. Inspectors of

Schools.
*HENSHAW, Rev. S. S., Secretary of Primitive Methodist

Sunday School Union.
*JOHNSON, Rev. FRANK, Editor of "The Sunday School

Chronicle and Christian Outlook."
*KELLY, Rev. CHAS, H., President of Wesleyan Methodist

Conference, 1889 and 1905.
KINNAIRD, Rt. Hon. Lord, Vice- President of the Sunday

School Union.

KIRK, J., Secretary of Ragged School Union.
LAWIS, Rev. J. F., Secretary of the Young People's

Committee United Methodist Free
Churches.
MEYER, Rev. F. B., B.A., President Baptist Union Great

Britain and Ireland.
MITCHELL, Rev. A. F., M.A., Vicar of St. Augustine's,

Sheffield.

*PEAKE, Prof. A. S., M.A., B.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis

and Dean of the Faculty of Theology,
Victoria University, Manchester.

PLUMB, Mr. HENRY, Member of Business Committee of the

Sunday School Union.

THE CHAIRMEN OF THE CONFERENCE.

REV. F. B. MEYER, B.A.
(President, Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland).

REV. J. MONRO GIBSON, M.A..D.D., LL.D.
(Ex-Moderator, Presbyterian
Church of England).

REV. C. H. KELLY

(Ex-President, Wesleyan Methodist
Conference).

THE VEN. W. M. SINCLAIR, D.D.
Archdeacon of London).

152 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

*CULLEY, Rev. ROBERT, Secretary of Wesleyan Methodist

Sunday School Union.

DAVISON, Rev. W. T., M.A., D.D., Professor at Richmond

College, and President Wesleyan
Methodist Conference, 1901.
DAWSON, Rev. H., M.A., Secretary of the Church of England

Sunday School Institute.
*GARVIE, Rev. A. E., M.A., D.D., Principal of New College,

London.
GIBSON, Rev. J. MONRO, M.A., D.D., LL.D., Ex-Moderator

Presbyterian Church of England.
*GREEN, Rev. S. W., M.A., Professor of New Testament

Greek in Regent's Park College.
*GROSER, Mr. W. H., B.Sc., Hon. Literary Secretary of the

Sunday School Union.
HEALING, Mr. Teos., Formerly one of H.M. Inspectors of

Schools.
*HENSHAW, Rev. S. S., Secretary of Primitive Methodist

Sunday School Union.
* JOHNSON, Rev. FRANK, Editor of "The Sunday School

Chronicle and Christian Outlook."
*KELLY, Rev. CHAS. H., President of Wesleyan Methodist

Conference, 1889 and 1905.
KINNAIRD, Rt. Hon. Lord, Vice-president of the Sunday

School Union.

KIRK, J., Secretary of Ragged School Union.
LAWIS, Rev. J. F., Secretary of the Young People's

Committee United Methodist Free
Churches.
MEYER, Rev. F. B., B.A., President Baptist Union Great

Britain and Ireland.
MITCHELL, Rev. A. F., M.A., Vicar of St. Augustine's,

Sheffield.

*PEAKE, Prof. A. S., M.A., B.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis

and Dean of the Faculty of Theology,
Victoria University, Manchester.

PLUMB, Mr. HENRY, Member of Business Committee of the

Sunday School Union.

THE CHAIRMEN OF THE CONFERENCE.

KKV. V. U. MEYKK, B.A.

(President, Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland).

KEV. J. MOXRO G1HSOX, M.A., O.IX, LL.U.
I Ex-Moderator, Presbyterian
Church of England).

KKV. C. H. KELLY

( Ex-President, "Wesleyan Methodist
Conference).

THE VEX. \V. M. SINCLAIR. D.D.
Arclidcncon of London).

LIST OF REPRESENTATIVES 153

ROBERTS, Rev. J. EDWARD, M.A., B.D., Chairman of Baptist

Union Young People's Committee.
ROBERTS, Rev. RICHARD, of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church,

Westbourne Grove.

*ROWLAND, Rev. ALFRED, B.A., D.D., Formerly Chairman of

the Congregational Union of England
and Wales.

SINDALL, Mr. ALFRED, Conductor of the Normal Class

for Teachers and Member of the
Business Committee of the Sunday
School Union.
TAYLOR, Rev. ALFRED, M.A., Secretary of the British and

Foreign Bible Society.
*TAYLOR, Mr. FREDERIC, Secretary of the Society of Friends

First-Day School Association.

*TOWERS, Mr. EDWARD, Late Hon. Secretary of the Sun-
day School Union ; President of the
World's Third Sunday School Conven-
tion, 1898.

*WATERS, Mr. CHAS., Founder and Hon. Secretary of the

International Bible Reading Associa-
tion.
WHITE, Mr. GEORGE, M.P., President of the Sunday School

Union, 1906.

YOUNG, Rev. JOHN, Sunday School and Examination Secre-
tary of Young People's Committee,
Methodist New Connexion.

* Member of the International Lesson Committee, British Section.

THE DISCUSSIONS

FIRST SESSION

The chair at the First Session was taken by the YEN.
ARCHDEACON OF LONDON, who opened the proceedings by
reading from Psalm cxix., verses 97-112, and by offering
prayer.

In the course of his address ARCHDEACON SINCLAIR ex-
pressed his pleasure at presiding at the opening meeting and
in giving the delegates a welcome to London. Two things, he
said, were noticeable in regard to the Sunday School system,
one that it was so much more vigorous in the North of
England than in the South, and the other, that more seemed
to be thought in England of the children than of the young
men and women. The latter fact had been brought before
his mind at the Jerusalem Convention when, at the close of
his sermon, the Americans seemed surprised that he had not
said more about work among the seniors. He was strongly
of opinion that the time had come when it was necessary to
grapple boldly with the problem of the Senior Scholars, and
to support the Institute movement which had already proved
so successful. He trusted that the outcome of the consulta-
tions would be such proposals as would be to the glory of
God, the good of the Church, and the benefit of the nation.

FIRST SESSION.
TOPIC : THE PRIMARY AIMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

Mr. W. H. GROSER. There will be little difference of
opinion with regard to Dr. W. T. Davison's most able
and lucid paper. I have always held that religious educa-
tion has for its object the development of the religious
nature, and therefore the various powers comprised in
that term are those to the development of which every
earnest Sunday School teacher will direct his efforts. And
the object of such development is, of course, that those
powers may be manifested in life and character.

Dr. MONRO GIBSON. It would be a help in the con-
struction of future schemes of lessons if the religious aim
of the school were kept prominently in view. The idea
of covering the whole Bible in a few years might be
dismissed and attention could be concentrated on those
portions of Scripture that would help us to bring the
children to Christ and to train them for His service. For
general Biblical training I look to the day schools, which
should provide the fuel for the fire that the Church hopes
to kindle. When I was in Wales at the time of the Revival,
I was much struck with the fact that some of those who
had been brought to Christ from the very depths of iniquity
and infamy were. able at once to lead in prayer and to give
excellent addresses, because they had been trained in the
Bible from their youth. They were acquainted with it,
they had all that furniture in their minds ready for use.

157

158 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

The fuel was there, and immediately the light was applied
it was all ablaze.

Rev. FRANK JOHNSON. Would Dr. Davison advise that
in the construction of lesson schemes the Biblical material
should be so arranged as to permit of frequent evangelical
appeal, or would he trust the Bible to produce its own
effects ?

Dr. W. T. DAVISON. I think the personal influence of
the teacher must be taken into account as well as the
framing of the lesson. So far as my Paper has any practical
bearing it will tend to limit the area that we attempt to
cover in order that the lessons might be somewhat more
specifically religious than they sometimes have been.

Mr. THOS. HEALING. I do not think that the appeal for con-
version gains in cogency by being overdone. All our teaching
should be illustrated by a knowledge of the Bible as litera-
ture, and the teacher should have an intellectual aim in
it in order to make its ethical teaching practical. If we
can invest the Bible with charm and make it so inte-
resting to them that they will study it for themselves we
have done much. I think if we restrict our lessons mainly
to the New Testament and to such parts of the Old as
will make our Christian message clear and more cogent,
that may produce the best result.

Mr. FREDERIC TAYLOR. There are many teachers who
prepare a lesson as a peg on which to hang an appeal
to the child, and they do not realise the importance of
the educational value of the lesson itself. For small chil-
dren to be appealed to every Sunday to know whether
their hearts are given to the Lord Jesus is apt to be not
only not useful but often very harmful.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. Our difficulty is increased by
dealing with the school as a whole. What applies to the
child of eight certainly does not apply to the youth of
sixteen. We must specialise in these things lest one has
the sixteen-year-old boy in mind, and another the eight-
year-old.

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL, I doubt whether parents realise

THE DISCUSSIONS 159

the aim of the, school as it has been defined, and many
of them do not regard it as a serious teaching agency.
One said to me the other day that he did not want his
child to learn anything in the Sunday School : he wanted
him to be taught to be good.

Mr. A. SINDALL. I strongly advocate the teaching of the
life of our Lord as the great subject of the year in the
Infant Classes. And I maintain that if the children come
out at the end of the year with an intelligent grasp of
the life and teaching of the Lord, they would go into the
main schools prepared for the other lessons which perhaps
do not always directly deal with that subject. I was glad
to hear our chairman advise the formation of Institutes
for the older scholars. Without that separation from the
main body we shall never retain them in large numbers.

Dr. W. F. ADENEY. The religious aim of the Sunday
School ought to govern us in the arrangement of the lessons,
and we should not be afraid to neglect the parts that are
least important for a practical religious end. We ought
also to remember that we have not only to give such lessons
as shall help religion, but we are to avoid such lessons as
hinder it. It is of extreme importance that we should
bear in mind the atmosphere into which our scholars go.
It is all very well to have a nice little comfortable arrange-
ment among ourselves, but we must remember they are
going out into the world, into a kind of waste howling
wilderness, and I doubt whether in our Sunday Schools
we quite fortify them for that.

Rev. J. E. ROBERTS. Referring to the question raised by
Mr. Johnson, I would say that I should not simply choose
lessons that can be made to have an evangelical appeal,
but should rather try and so train the child-nature, by giving
them practically the whole of the Bible instruction, that
the definite yielding to Jesus Christ at a particular time
becomes the natural result of such Christian training. And
I think if special attempts are made at certain times to
gather children of certain ages together, and then quietly
and simply bring home to them what yielding to Jesus

160 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

Christ means, that is' a better plan than doing it Sunday
by Sunday in the classes. Whilst we, however, are agreed
in the main as to the primary aims of the Sunday School,
I fear our congregations are not; and one of the most
urgent tasks is the education of the consciences of Christian
people generally in regard to these aims.

Mr. W. H. GROSER. I think the constant appeal is a very
perilous thing. The attitude of the boy or girl towards the
Lord Jesus Christ is very different at seven or eight from
what it is four or five years later. We must not look for
conversion in any proper sense of the word at a very early
age. It has been happily said that the young child may be
taught to look to Jesus as his Friend, but the one a little older,
beginning to feel consciousness of sinfulness, to look at Him
as his Saviour, and the youth or maid to take the Lord Jesus
as Master and Guide.

Rev. ALFRED TAYLOR. After all, what a child learns at
school is a very different thing from what we perhaps think
we teach him, and a great deal is acquired by a child in
spite of his teacher. If we did not believe that, very few of
us would dare to teach. The Sunday School needs also to
remember that it is building up Christian character, and that
there is to be progressive instruction.

Rev. J. YOUNG. The Sunday School should be regarded as
an evangelical agency, and whether the appeal is made week
by week for personal or immediate decision for Christ or not
the object should be kept ever in view ; but I think the method
must be left largely to the intelligence and judgment of the
teacher.

Dr. W. T. DAVISON, in replying, said, I do not think the
principle laid down in my little Paper is so commonplace
and axiomatic as it may seem. I believe if it were carried
out, if we all saw all that it means and implies, I believe
its adoption would make a wonderful difference in solving
for us some of our most serious problems.

MR. W. H. GROSER, B.SC.
(Senior Hon. Sec., Sunday School Union).

REV. R. F. HORTON, M.A., D.D.
(Hampstead, London).

Photo by Ernest Miles

REV. A. E. GARVIE, M.A., D.D.
(Principal of New College, London).

REV. FRANK JOHNSON
(Editor, "The Sunday School Chronicle and Christian Outlook").

160 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

Christ means, that is a better plan than doing it Sunday
by Sunday in the classes. Whilst we, however, are agreed
in the main as to the primary aims of the Sunday School,
I fear our congregations are not; and one of the most
urgent tasks is the education of the consciences of Christian
people generally in regard to these aims.

Mr. W. H. GROSER. I think the constant appeal is a very
perilous thing. The attitude of the boy or girl towards the
Lord Jesus Christ is very different at seven or eight from
what it is four or five years later. We must not look for
conversion in any proper sense of the word at a very early
age. It has been happily said that the young child may be
taught to look to Jesus as his Friend, but the one a little older,
beginning to feel consciousness of sinfulness, to look at Him
as his Saviour, and the youth or maid to take the Lord Jesus
as Master and Guide.

Rev. ALFRED TAYLOR. After all, what a child learns at
school is a very different thing from what we perhaps think
we teach him, and a great deal is acquired by a child in
spite of his teacher. If we did not believe that, very few of
us would dare to teach. The Sunday School needs also to
remember that it is building up Christian character, and that
there is to be progressive instruction.

Rev. J. YOUNG. The Sunday School should be regarded as
an evangelical agency, and whether the appeal is made week
by week for personal or immediate decision for Christ or not
the object should be kept ever in view ; but I think the method
must be left largely to the intelligence and judgment of the
teacher.

Dr. W. T. DAVISON, in replying, said, I do not think the
principle laid down in my little Paper is so commonplace
and axiomatic as it may seem. I believe if it were carried
out, if we all saw all that it means and implies, I believe
its adoption would make a wonderful difference in solving
for us some of our most serious problems.

MR. \V. H. GROSER, 15.SC.
(Senior Hon. Sec., Sunday School Union).

REV. R. V. HORTON, 11. A., D.D.
(Hampstead, London).

J'liota J'V Krncst -l//fc

REV. A. E. GARVIE, M.A., D.D.
(Principal of New College, London).

REV. FRANK JOHNSON
(Editor, "The Sunday School Chronicle and Christian Outlook").

THE DISCUSSIONS 161

II. MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND ITS BEARING UPON
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHING.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. I hardly see how these subjects
affect children. A child's life is over when it reaches the
age of twelve or fourteen, and information of this kind they
rarely ask for until the adolescent period. It seems to me
we must give children the Bible exactly as it is. The Old
Testament stories are most beautiful for the little child.
Intellectual doubt is not rampant with young children,
therefore this discussion affects adults and young men and
women. Give the children the Bible, not your ideas of
the Bible, and trust it to do its own work.

F. TAYLOR. It seems to me we have two distinct things
before us. One is how far we ought to bring the results
of criticism to children, and the other is how far teachers
ought to be made acquainted with them.

Rev. J. YOUNG. I think no teacher should touch the subject
who is not perfectly familiar with it and able to handle it
intelligently and reverently.

Rev. RICHARD ROBERTS. Mr. Archibald is right in my
judgment, so far as young children are concerned, for any
view of inspiration is secondary to what the Bible is in
itself. I have a book of Scripture stories, and my little
girl has named it her " Jesus Christ Book." That seems to
me to express pretty accurately the right view of the Bible.
It is just the "Jesus Christ Book," and instead of presup-
posing any particular theory of inspiration as our justification
for our faith in the authority of the Scriptures, we should
rather regard it as the repertory of a complete knowledge
of Jesus Christ. This view is justified because it has so
worked out in human experience and in our own experi-
ence, and the authority of our own experience is a surer
guarantee of the truth of the Scriptures than any presumptive
view of inspiration can ever be. I believe, therefore, that
we should habitually cause ourselves and others to regard
the Bible from this particular angle, and if we did that

12

162 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

we should get away from the difficulties which Biblical
criticism has raised.

Dr. MONRO GIBSON. It occurs to me that if we keep the
primary aim of the school well in view we shall get help
in regard to this subject. We ought never to bring forward
the critical theories until the necessity arises. The question
of origins is rather academic than practical. Consider a
moment whether you would ever get a proper idea of a
statue by a visit to the marble quarries of Carrara, whether
one look at the Apollo Belvidere would not give you a
far better idea of a statue than a whole life-time spent
in the quarries of Carrara.

Rev. FRANK JOHNSON. May I venture to suggest a practical
difficulty ? The International Lessons for 1907 begin with
Genesis ; and we are already face to face with the critical
and expository aids upon those chapters. Would you
counsel the entire exclusion of any references to critical
results ? Would a normal class of children under twelve
feel any difficulties in these narratives ? And since these
lessons will also be used in many Senior Classes, how
far should a teacher deal with the difficulties that arise ?
Is it possible with a class of young men to avoid the problems
that are so obvious ? If not, what position do you counsel
teachers to take ?

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. Was there ever a word spoken
more strongly in favour of a graded course of lessons
than that which we have just heard ? It seems to me
that the only way out of the difficulty, which the Editor
of the Sunday School Chronicle so keenly feels, is a graded
course of lessons, and I hope the Conference is going
to take a forward step in that matter.

Dr. MONRO GIBSON. Mr. Archibald does not mean
that these lessons should be left out for the young
people ?

Mr. ARCHIBALD. Oh no ! The difficulty is the treatment
of them in a general way.

Mr. F. F. BELSEY. I think it is only fair to say that these
lessons are supposed to be taken by the intermediate school.

THE DISCUSSIONS 163

We have a two-years' course of simple Bible stories for the
beginners.

Mr. GEORGE WHITE, M.P. What has developed of late
years under the title of Higher Criticism I think is best
avoided almost altogether by Sunday School teachers. The
doubts and difficulties that come into the minds of the
seniors are not the difficulties that Biblical scholars feel
but questions they hear in their own homes raised by
infidel parents or papers. It is with these common doubts
that teachers want to be able to cope in an ordinary way.
That they can only do by getting rational views of the
inspiration of the Bible and sound general principles which
will help them in meeting those individual doubts and
difficulties. Recently one of my teachers came to me and
said he had two youths in his class and he must have them
removed, for they were constantly suggesting all sorts of
difficulties about the narrative as it was read, and that led to
a discussion, and he could not successfully teach the class at
all. I said, "Are these genuine doubts, or are they raised
simply for the purpose of putting you into a fog and raising
a discussion in the class ? " He thought they were for that
purpose. I said, " I will take the class myself next Sunday
afternoon and see whether these doubts are genuine or
otherwise." I soon discovered they were absolutely genuine
doubts, put forward with a desire to get them removed, and
in one case at least I happened to know they were suggested
by the father himself, who was a man "who talked on the
Market-place, constantly attacking the Bible and revealed
religion. I am bound to say the afternoon to me was a very
interesting one and far from being a trouble to me. But I
ultimately thought it was better to remove these two youths,
because I was quite sure the teacher was not able to meet the
difficulty, and I did so, of course without letting it be known
why I did it. But this was a case in which he simply wanted,
not any very great knowledge of theology or science generally,
but some sensible basis upon which he could say what were
the real objects of the Bible.

Rev. FRANK JOHNSON. The whole matter is a question of

164 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

fact and truth. Are there any results of criticism absolutely
indisputable ? If so, that truth must be received and taught,
however it conflicts with tradition.

Archdeacon SINCLAIR. Prof. Orr's paper is of an eminently
reassuring character all through, and if the conclusions of
this paper are accepted, it will be impossible, I think, to
accept any of the dicta of the higher critics at present with
regard to the Pentateuch as absolutely proved.

Professor A. S. PEAKE. Professor Orr's paper shows us the
difficulties of the situation ; but I cannot accept the main
results at which he arrives both in the paper and in his book,
"The Problem of the Old Testament." I have read that
book carefully, with great admiration for many of the
qualities displayed, but with complete disagreement as to
Dr. Orr's chief conclusions. There are a very large number
of people who will certainly say that Dr. Orr's book has
knocked the bottom out of the critical position. In my
judgment it has done nothing of the kind. Mr. Johnson has
put the point in a very clear and definite way. Have we any
critical results on which we can carry every one with us ? I
am afraid we have not very many. It is quite true, of course,
that Dr. Orr's position is by no means so conservative as
people would imagine. There is a great deal of tacit con-
cession and even explicit concession at various points in the
book. But it is not the case that we have, even with Dr. Orr's
concessions, anything like a situation on which a pronounce-
ment could go forth from a Conference of this kind. Of
course I think that certain principles might be clearly kept in
view. We might emphasise very strongly what Dr. Davison
emphasises, that criticism is to be kept in subordination to
the general aim of teaching the Bible. My main claim on the
intellectual side is that the Bible as it is should be taught and
stored in the hearts of our young people. I have enormous
faith in the power of the Bible itself to effect miracles of
grace in God's hands. But when we come to the question as
to origins, I believe, with Dr. Gibson, that that is a very sub-
ordinate thing. But we ought so to formulate our principles
that our children as they grow older and come face to face

THE DISCUSSIONS 165

with these will feel that this does not touch the vital element
in their Christian faith. I remain now, if a personal confes-
sion may be pardoned, as one who must be classed in many
respects as an advanced Old Testament critic, but I remain
now as firm in my conviction of evangelical truth as I was
before I ever heard of criticism at all not only as firm,
but I think, if I may say so, firmer and even more intelligent
in my conviction than I was before. I am quite sure, -how-
ever, that the difficulty does not lie with the Old Testament
in the immediate future, it lies with the New Testament,
where I for my own part adopt what is largely a conservative
position, because I consider that the problems of the two litera-
tures are entirely different. Nothing that I have ever read or
written with reference to criticism in any way goes against
my own conviction of the unspeakable religious value of both
the Old and New Testament and my belief that the more the
knowledge of both can be acquired, the greater will be the
value for the children in our Sunday Schools.

Lord KINNAIRD. I was thinking of asking the question
whether this Conference should issue a sort of manifesto on
the subjects discussed, but I gather from the differences of
opinion expressed that no agreement would be reached on
this question at any rate. I take it that many of us would be
sorry that anything should go out to the effect that we have
largely changed our opinion in the last twenty or thirty years,
and that the position taken by the majority of those who
write on these matters is fundamentally different from what
it was twenty years ago.

Archdeacon SINCLAIR. There is no idea on the part of
those who brought us together that we should pass a resolu-
tion on this subject. It was more that we should talk these
things over.

SECOND SESSION

The chair at the Second Session was occupied by the
Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D., LL.D., who, after opening the
Session with prayer, said it was one of the most hopeful
signs of the times that so much attention was now paid to
the best way of studying and teaching the Bible ; and the
Sunday School Union was once again showing its alertness
and wide-awakeness, in giving an opportunity for focussing as
much as possible the thoughts of the time.

Among the changes that had taken place in regard to the
Bible and its study few were more notable than the change
from the microscopic to the telescopic method, or from the
careful dealing with " tit bits " to the study of wholes : whole
books, whole periods, a whole Bible with its grand and
gradual unfolding of Divine revelation. They would recall
Goethe's maxim:

" Im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren,
Resolut zu leben ; "

and Matthew Arnold used to urge them to " see life steadily,
and see it whole." This could be applied with great
advantage both to the separate books, and to the Book of
books.

Thomas Boston once devoted nearly six months' discourses
to eight verses of the Book of Revelation, and one of his
(Dr. Gibson's) fellow-students began his labours by preach-
ing a winter's series of discourses on a text of five words :
" He drove out the man ! " That detailed method was the
fashion fifty years ago, but to-day we were urged to lift up
our eyes to the hills, and to take in the great things of reve-
lation, the mountains of truth that brought peace to the
people. Such a method brought immense gains.

" This is only one thing briefly indicated ; but it is of
importance, and I feel sure that such a Conference as we are
enjoying these two days through the hospitality of the
Sunday School Union will tend to further the development
of Sunday School instruction in this and other helpful
directions."

SECOND SESSION.
TOPIC : "THE METHOD OF TEACHING THE BIBLE."

(a) THE SCIENTIFIC V. THE HAPHAZARD.
(6) THE USE OF THE BIBLE FOR CHRISTIAN EDIFICATION.

Mr. ARCHIBALD. How would you apply what you have
said to an eight-year-old class ?

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL. My point is whatever we teach the
little children should lead up in the Old Testament to the
prophetical part, and agree with what we teach them when
they are older. It was suggested this morning that they
should take the Book of Genesis and make what they can of
it. I think they ought to be told from the very first that the
world was not created in six days.

Mr. ARCHIBALD. You mean we ought to say, u Now this is
not true " ?

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL. I should not teach it them at all. I
think all teaching should be concentrated on that part of
Scripture about which there is no question.

Rev. F. TAYLOR. Would you restrict the child to the parts
that centre round the prophetical books ?

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL. I would give them some know-
ledge of the previous history in such stories as David and
Solomon and so on. You remember we have the New
Testament.

Mr. ARCHIBALD. But we could not give the New Testament
as a whole to a little child at first. If we present to the child
the thought that Jesus was a mighty Son of God, you are just

167

168 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

pushing away the child from Him. It seems to me that
Jesus Christ came as a little child so that the_ child might
hear of Him rather as a little child than the mighty Son of
God. You must begin at the child's point of contact.

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL. I had the upper classes of the school
chiefly in mind in writing the Paper.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. More than half the scholars are
under twelve years of age.

Rev. FRANK JOHNSON. There are two ideals in conflict.
The child-study expert desires to arrange the Bible-facts in
an order suitable to the development of the child's mind ;
whereas the scholar desires to teach the Bible in the order of
its historic evolution.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. That is the vital point before the
Conference. The child is often forgotten. I believe the
right way is to take a child through the Bible and tell him
the stories just as you would tell any other stories until he
begins asking questions. The Bible cannot lead any one
wrong.

Mr. THOMAS HEALING. I think the preaching of to-day
differs from the preaching we heard in our boyhood, not so
much by what it sets forth as by what it leaves out. That is
the result of progress acting on the collective intelligence of
the congregation and the culture of the preacher. With
regard to putting those things before young children, I have
great respect for what has been advanced by Mr. Mitchell,
because my own studies have been very much in that direc-
tion for some years, but I do not think I should have studied
that way when I was a youngster. As a child I enjoyed very
much the stories of Genesis. The stories of Genesis, Joshua,
and Judges give the teacher the opportunity of teaching the
ethics and morality of the Bible and the character of God.
They are just in the form that the child can lay hold of.

Dr. W. T. DAVISON. What Mr. Mitchell has described in
his Paper ought to be in the mind of every well-educated
teacher when he sets to work. But those who know Sunday
School teachers know that they will have to be trained for
nearly a generation before they reach that point. Supposing

REV. W. F. ADENEY. M.A., D.D.

(Principal, Lancashire Independent
College).

REV. \V. T. DAVISON, M.A., D.D.
(Professor of Theology, Richmond
College, Surrey).

REV. A. F. MITCHELL, M.A.
(Vicar of St. Augustine's, Sheffield).

REV. R. A. FALCONER, D.D., D.LITT.

(Principal, Presbyterian College, Halifax,
Nova Scotia).

PROF. A. S. PEAKE, M.A., B.D.
(Victoria University, Manchester).

168 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODEEN METHODS

pushing away the child from Him. It seems to me that
Jesus Christ came as a little child so that the child might
hear of Him rather as a little child than the mighty Son of
God. You must begin at the child's point of contact.

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL. I had the upper classes of the school
chiefly in mind in writing the Paper.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. More than half the scholars are
under twelve years of age.

Rev. FRANK JOHNSON. There are two ideals in conflict.
The child-study expert desires to arrange the Bible-facts in
an order suitable to the development of the child's mind ;
whereas the scholar desires to teach the Bible in the order of
its historic evolution.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. That is the vital point before the
Conference. The child is often forgotten. I believe the
right way is to take a child through the Bible and tell him
the stories just as you would tell any other stories until he
begins asking questions. The Bible cannot lead any one
wrong.

Mr. THOMAS HEALING. I think the preaching of to-day
differs from the preaching we heard in our boyhood, not so
much by what it sets forth as by what it leaves out. That is
the result of progress acting on the collective intelligence of
the congregation and the culture of the preacher. With
regard to putting those things before young children, I have
great respect for what has been advanced by Mr. Mitchell,
because my own studies have been very much in that direc-
tion for some years, but I do not think I should have studied
that way when I was a youngster. As a child I enjoyed very
much the stories of Genesis. The stories of Genesis, Joshua,
and Judges give the teacher the opportunity of teaching the
ethics and morality of the Bible and the character of God.
They are just in the form that the child can lay hold of.

Dr. W. T. DAVISON. What Mr. Mitchell has described in
his Paper ought to be in the mind of every well-educated
teacher when he sets to work. But those who know Sunday
School teachers know that they will have to be trained for
nearly a generation before they reach that point. Supposing

REV. \V. F. ADENEY. M.A., D.I).

(Principal, Lancashire Independent
College).

KEY. \Y. T. DAVISOX, M.A., D.D.

(Professor of Theology. Richmond
College. Surrey).

REV. A. F. MITCHELL, -M.A.
(Vicar of St. Augustine's, She.Tn.-lcl).

REV. K. A. FALCONER, D.D., D.LITT.

(Principal, Presbyterian College, Halifax,
Nova Scotia).

1'ROK. A. S. PEAKE, M.A., B.D.

(Victoria University, Manchester).

THE DISCUSSIONS 169

they reached it, how would it affect the actual teaching
not only of the little children, but of the older scholars ? Are
we to begin by teaching them duty ? Are we to cut out
the narrative portions because they cannot pass muster with
the scientific historian of to-day ? I do not think the reader
of the Paper meant that. From the practical point of view
many would say, "What are we to do, not only with the story
of Genesis, but with the stories of Samuel and Kings ? Are
we, because we have learnt what we think to be a fairly
scientific view of the Old Testament, are we to throw these
narratives into the background as comparatively unimportant
for the purposes of actual teaching ? " It seems to me to be
a very sweeping statement to say that because the latter
portion of the Old Testament is the most important, there-
fore other parts which are less important should be omitted
altogether.

Rev. A. F. MITCHELL. I should begin with the Prophet
Elijah, and should certainly leave out the earlier parts of
Genesis.

Dr. A. E. GARVIE. We- are a long way from getting Mr.
Mitchell's admirably conceived scheme directly into the
Sunday Schools. It is first of all necessary to get a scheme
like that into the minds of those who are responsible for-
setting the International Lessons, and then into the minds of
the teachers of the senior classes. But we ought not to
attempt to teach the Bible as a whole to the younger
children. I do not share Mr. Archibald's confidence in the
wisdom of teaching Genesis just as it is. I believe we are
being driven to a system of graded lessons. At first children
ought to be taught stories with an effort to leave the correct
impression of human duty and Divine grace upon their
minds ; historical accuracy is for instruction later. Experts
in child-study may tell us how to teach, but it is for Biblical
scholars to tell us what is to be taught.

Dr. MONRO GIBSON. I should deplore exceedingly leaving
out the Book of Genesis with its marvellous stories. In
dealing with these questions my own effort is not to decide
whether they are historical or not. A great deal of the

170 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

teaching of these stories is lost because people attach so
much importance to the question whether they are historical.
Their real value lies in the spiritual truths taught.

Rev. R. ROBERTS. It is more a question of making teachers
familiar with these facts than imparting them to the scholars.

Professor S. W. GREEN. Mr. Roberts has gone to the
very heart of the matter. We have to reckon not only with
the ignorance of the teachers, but with the fact that there are
two ways of looking at the Bible. Dr. Garvie has pointed to
the devotional use of the Bible. Its use for spiritual needs
is entirely compatible with what may be termed the scien-
tific view, and if we devote ourselves to getting that view
instilled into the teachers we shall be doing something not
only to dispel ignorance but to make many aware that such
a view of Scripture is entirely consistent with the most
devoted love to Christ.

TOPIC : " TEACHER TRAINING."

THE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

TEACHER.

Mr. A. SINDALL. The real difficulty is to get those who
most need training to attend a class or go through a course
of study. Sometimes, too, superintendents are unwilling to
part with their teachers for a short time. Another difficulty
is that the teachers themselves do not always feel the need
for training.

Mr. EDWARD TOWERS. Superintendents all over the king-
dom are compelled to do the best with such teachers as they
can get rather than wait for the perfect teacher to come
along. If it is to go forth from this Conference that superin-
tendents are to discard the less capable teachers, then they
would simply rebel. The Church itself has not yet adequately
realised the importance of children, and the consequence is
they have not sent their best men and women into the
Sunday School.

Dr. ALFRED ROWLAND. To a large extent we have poor
material amongst the teachers, and the question is how best

THE DISCUSSIONS 171

to equip those teachers. It is of no use to expect teachers
living in the suburbs to attend classes at the Old Bailey.
They seldom have time, and therefore some arrangement
ought to be made for training them in their own Churches.
I have long been of opinion that the week-evening service
might be utilised as a sort of preparation class for Sunday
School teachers.

Rev. J. E. ROBERTS. I do not think that in the future there
will be any great difficulty in getting a fairly good supply of
teachers, but what we have to do is to awaken the consciences
not merely of the teachers but of the Church itself.

Professor JOHN ADAMS, in replying, said he would rather
overwork one good teacher than have a number of bad ones ;
in fact, he would rather have a child not taught than that he
should be taught badly.

THIRD SESSION
Chairman : The Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A.

After prayer, Mr. MEYER said he had for several years used
the International Lesson with his teachers, and had con-
stantly felt that it was capable of improvement. It covered
too large an extent of territory, and often most interesting and
salutary portions of the Bible were omitted. The impression
left on the mind was very similar to that of a general view
from a railway train travelling quickly through a landscape
and leaving in many cases rather an indistinct and blurred
view of the whole. He felt that a more minute and careful
study would leave a more definite impression.

At the same time they wanted a system as simple as
possible. He believed there would be a strong argument
against the universal acceptance of different subjects for
the different parts of the school. They ought to enlist the
very best minds in the Church for the training of the
children, and in his judgment no Reform was more necessary
than to induce Sunday Schools to seek for better trained
teachers.

THIRD SESSION.

TOPIC : " THE INTERNATIONAL LESSON SCHEME."

ITS DEFECTS AND SUGGESTED REMEDIES.

Dr. W. F. ADENEY. It seems to me that it is certainly time
that the English Committee took a more definite stand in
regard to what English Sunday Schools need. I understand
that virtually the lessons are dictated by the American Com-
mittee, who in their turn are dictated to by the publishers.
The first thing to do is to see how the yoke of the American
publishers of the International System can be broken, and I
believe our American Sunday School friends will welcome
any co-operation towards that end. If co-operation is not
practicable then we shall have seriously to consider whether
the beautiful International idea is so supremely important that
the efficiency of the Sunday Schools is to be sacrificed to it.

All three Papers seem to me, if not altogether against our
present system, at all events in favour of looking for some-
thing wiser and better. I do not agree with Mr. Groser that
the lessons should be pitched to the level of the most back-
ward scholar.

There are three possible ways in which we can deal with
the Bible as the groundwork of teaching. The first is to
begin with the child and consider its requirements rather
than the manipulation of the Book. The second is distinctly
Biblical namely, to trace out the course of Divine revelation
in the history of Israel and in the New Testament ; and the
third is to deal with the subject of the great Christian
doctrines. The two latter can be combined. Why should

174 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

we not have a scheme which gives a survey of the grand
development of the religion of Israel up to Christianity, and
then a series of lessons on Messianic prophecy and Christ,
on Sacrifice and Redemption, and on the Christian concep-
tion of life ? That would work in with the notion of dis-
tinctive kinds of teaching for distinctive ages.

Dr. A. E. GARVIE. It is very desirable that we should work
with our American brethren, but we are not to be precluded
from considering improvements on the ground that the
Americans might not entertain them. The English Com-
mittee ought to formulate the best scheme they can and then
press it on the Americans for their acceptance.

If the International Scheme is not improved we shall
find that the great Denominations will establish schemes
of their own and the International Scheme will in time be
left stranded.

In dealing with the Infant Classes, we ought to recognise
that age does not actually indicate capacity, and we ought
not to be guided by the hard and fast rule of an age limit ;
but when scholars pass from the Infant Department of the
day school to a higher department, they ought also to pass
from the Infant Department of the Sunday School. The
same principle should be observed in the Upper Classes.
When a boy leaves school and goes to work he is not so
ready to continue in the lower section of the Sunday School.
The age at which a certain measure of independence is
reached ought to be recognised as the time for the transition
from one department to another.

Mr. EDWARD TOWERS. I stand here as a defender of the
International Lesson System. It has its defects and it has
received all kinds of criticism, but at the same time we
have not yet hit upon anything really able to take its
place. Prof. Peake tells us there is no continuity ; but I
contend there is. The main idea of the majority of the
teachers is to make a religious impression on the minds
and hearts of their scholars not to teach Bible history.
We must consider the material they are working with.
We must make the lessons suitable to the character of

THE DISCUSSIONS 175

those who are being taught. The International Scheme
is capable of improvement ; we ought to try to mend not
end it.

Rev. J. E. ROBERTS. I am quite convinced that there
must be some very considerable modification of the Inter-
national Lessons if they are to be retained in English
Sunday Schools. Whilst all are agreed on doing every-
thing in their power to preserve the International Lessons,
it would not be fair to our work to sacrifice the efficiency
of our schools in order to perpetuate the sentiment of
International partnership. I do not think any one of the
four principles mentioned in Mr. Johnson's Paper as laid
down -by the International Convention, as a basis of the
lessons, would be accepted by any present.

Rev. FRANK JOHNSON. Is the following of the historical
order of revelation the only way of teaching religion, or
is it but one way, and is that way suitable for all children ?
It is a mere superstition to think that the Sunday School
Union is bound hand and foot to the International Lesson
Scheme. They are pledged" to nothing but truth and the
efficiency of the Sunday, Schools. There is no doubt that
the education of the people, both in America and in this
country, has outgrown the ideal which was acceptable when
the International System was started. As one outcome of
the Conference I should like to see the English section
of the Committee enlarged so as to become thoroughly
representative of the whole country.

Mr. F. F. BELSEY. The Denver Convention, which Mr.
Johnson and I attended, accepted the suggestion of the
British section that the International Lesson System should
apply only to the main body of the scholars and not to
the Beginners and the Advanced Classes.

Mr. G. H. ARCHIBALD. Infant teachers are crying out for
a Special Course for the very little people, and I have been
recommending teachers of the four- and five-year-olds to
follow a course which has been arranged by Professor
George W. Pease. It consists of a two years' Nature
Course and it contains some Bible stories. The child lives

176 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

more closely to God through nature than at any other time
of its existence. The Course for beginners ought to be
drawn up by specialists, and I believe the Kindergarteners
could give the best help. The lessons ought to be so
plain and the stories so simple that there should be no
need to point the moral. Children are not getting the
Bible ; they are getting teachers' imperfect ideas of the
Bible. The average young Sunday School teacher is
under the impression that he has to preach to the
children.

Professor A. S. PEAKE, in replying, said : In the course
of my work I come into contact with men fresh from the
Sunday School, and I know what kind of Bible knowledge
they come with. I have in mind the case of a man who
had graduated and held two degrees, and was going on
for another, who had been brought up in Sunday Schools
under the International Lesson System, yet I found that
a large proportion of the simplest facts of Old Testament
history, to say nothing of the Prophets, were largely un-
known to him. What was the cause underlying that result ?
I have come to the conclusion that the system does not
work in the way in which one expected it to work in the
imparting even of elementary Biblical knowledge in a large
number of cases. I have tested the International Scheme
over a considerable area, and I frequently found that when
the subject was difficult the lessons were too long ; and
on the other hand when it was quite simple and easy the
lessons were extremely short. The narratives also are
sometimes not consecutive. Personally, I think more time
ought to be devoted to reading the Bible and less time
given to exposition. The main point is that the lesson
should be left in the minds of the children. Teachers
ought to trust the Bible to make its own impression rather
than spend so much time trying to point the lesson. I
believe that a consecutive course of study carried on over
a certain area without the painful gaps that at present
exist would be much more beneficial, and would result in
a greater cumulative force of moral power. The quality

THE DISCUSSIONS 177

of the religious life in the Churches depends very largely
upon the kind of religious instruction that has been
given, and the religious instruction depends largely upon
the history underlying it. With regard to the Golden
Texts, I think that the memory ought to be stored with
those passages of Scripture which are of the greatest
intrinsic importance.

Mr. W. H. GROSER also thanked the members of the
Conference for the extent to which they had answered
some of the queries in his Paper. He noted with the
greatest delight and satisfaction that they were all ap-
proaching something like a consensus of opinion in the
direction of graded lessons. His only fear was that the
standpoint from which the bulk of their American friends
viewed the whole question was in some degree incompatible
with the views which had been expressed by the Conference.

13

FOURTH SESSION

Chairman : Rev. C. H. KELLY, Ex- President of the
Wesleyan Conference.

Prayer having been offered, Mr. KELLY, in opening the
Session, said that it was very pleasant to feel that nowadays
there was so much more distinct recognition of the Sunday
School on the part of the Church. It was rather wonderful
considering the position of children in the New Testament
and the great work of our Saviour, that for so many centuries
very little was done for the children. Unquestionably in the
past there had not been in the Church and on the part of
many ministers that recognition of the importance of the
work there ought to have been ; but a change had come over
the Church, and to-day some of the best minds were at work
endeavouring to strengthen the great Institution to which
they were all so much attached, and for that he thought
they ought to feel abundantly thankful.

FOURTH SESSION.

TOPIC : " THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGES AND THE SUNDAY

SCHOOL."

Mr. F. F. BELSEY. Some little time ago the Sunday School
Union approached the various Committees of the Denomi-
national Colleges with a suggestion that there should be pro-
vided in the College curriculum some special training for
ministers in Sunday School methods of work, and in a great
many instances they received the reply that the curriculum
was at present so overladen that it would be utterly im-
possible to introduce any other subject, although they were
good enough here and there to admit its importance. Pro-
fessor Adeney's arguments ought to influence the College
Committees to give greater recognition to Sunday School
work, and some special preparation to the future pastors
of Churches in order to prepare them for the duties of
teacher-training.

Mr. J. CROWTHER (Hon. Sec. Sunday School Union). I
personally interviewed the Principal of one College, but
although he was quite in sympathy with the work, he said
the College courses were already mapped out, and they had
not the opportunity of making what some felt to be a needful
innovation. We have not only sought the help of the Pro-
fessors, but we have also sought the help of some of the
Committees, and Sir Albert Spicer, who has given valuable
help, was confronted with the self-same difficulty, namely,
that the Colleges were already overloaded with work. They
saw the need ; but they could not find the time to meet it as
fully as was desired.

179

180 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

Dr. W. T. DAVISON. I am quite sure that the answers our
friends have received from certain Colleges would be given
by all who undertake the practical work of training young
ministers, and it would not imply the slightest lack of sym-
pathy or any failure to realise the importance of the subject.
Colleges have not only a crowded curriculum, but they have
outside classes which the students are required to attend.
Would it not be well to look at the actual conditions of the
case, and not at what might be ideally expected ? It seems
to me that a Professor should be always training his men to
teach, and not that he should have a special hour for con-
sidering the art and principles of teaching. The work should
really be interwoven with all the ordinary teaching of the
College. I agree with Professor Adeney when he says that
every Minister should be the trainer of his own Sunday
School teachers.

Mr. CHARLES WATERS. This discussion shows there are
other institutions beside the Sunday School that need atten-
tion. I do not think that the apologies that are made for
the omission of this important work from the Colleges are
quite sufficient. The training of teachers ought to be one
of the chief things to be considered in the education of
ministers.

Mr. THOMAS HEALING. Without increasing the College
staff or overloading the curriculum, let the Professor of
Psychology lecture on Child Nature, and the Professor of
Pastoral Theology on Sunday School Method and Organisa-
tion. The Library should contain a selection of the best
books on these subjects, and the lives of great educators.

Dr. A. E. GARVIE. I am inclined to take a more hopeful
view than Dr. Davison has done. I do not think the change
can be made as quickly or as thoroughly as might be desired,
for the Colleges are limited very largely by the opinion and
the demand of the Churches. When the Churches realise
the importance of the training of teachers the Colleges will
be able to take action with confidence, knowing that the
Churches will support them. At the present time there is
a movement among the Colleges to come into closer touch

THE DISCUSSIONS 181

with the Universities, and this imposes certain burdens upon
the Colleges which they must be prepared to meet. But it
is quite possible that the Colleges and Churches will yet be
compelled to face the question of how far these academic
distinctions interfere with the practical training that they
desired to give their students.

Rev. CHARLES KELLY. A large amount of good will follow
this discussion, because, although we may not be able to
get special lecturers appointed in the Colleges, yet the
Professors will see how they may assist Sunday School
work. There is a great difficulty in the way of helping
those teachers who most need help. Those who avail
themselves of the classes are mostly those who are already
apt at teaching, and I agree with Professor Adeney that
the only way to deal with the difficulty is by preparing
young people for teaching before they are accepted as
teachers.

Rev. R. ROBERTS. The question of teacher-training in
Churches is a pressing-problem. It is an attractive idea
to have two orders of Christian ministers the preacher and
the teacher. But we have to face the fact that we are not
likely to see that state of things this side of fifty years, and
that the same man will have to do the two things. It is
therefore apparent that there must be somewhere in the
training of ministers that particular element which will enable
them to do what most of us are coming to feel is the most
important part of our work, training the teachers of the
young. I am convinced that no Conference will get the
Colleges to undertake that work. The only power that will
get the Colleges to undertake it is the Churches. The real
crux of the position is the relation of the Churches to the
Sunday Schools, and we shall have to awaken the consciences
of the Churches to the importance of Sunday School work,
and then the Colleges will give what the Churches de-
mand.

Professor A. S. PEAKE. I feel that the work of the Sunday
School is the most important which the minister has to do,
and whatever else suffers that ought not to suffer. There-

182 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

fore the College curriculum ought to be shaped in such a way
as to provide some training, so that a minister when he leaves
will not be quite helpless. The curriculum is undeniably
already seriously crowded, and especially is it crowded in con-
sequence of the Colleges' closer relations with the Universities.
Of course when students take the Arts course they have a
certain amount of training in psychology, but the fact that
they have a training in psychology does not necessarily mean
they have a training in child psychology or in the art of
teaching. It means that they get a foundation on which
it is easy to build rapidly an elementary knowledge of child-
psychology and teacher- training. I feel strongly that the
claim of the Sunday School is so paramount that other things
will have to give way to it.

Professor S. W. GREEN. I do not think that the real
difficulty lies with the Theological Colleges. As soon as
the Churches show that they desire the minister to receive
that particular kind of training it will be given. But the
Churches and the schools are not ready to insist upon
having properly trained teachers ; they have to be converted.
I do not for a moment believe that ministers would shirk the
extra work. I believe they would welcome it on the lines
laid down by Professor Adeney.

Mr. EDWARD TOWERS. If students went out into the
ministry thoroughly equipped to take their position at the
head of the schools and could show the teachers how to
teach, their power in the Church would be multiplied enor-
mously.

Mr. ALFRED SINDALL. I am glad to have heard the remarks
of Professor Adeney, because he said certain things which no
layman would have dared to say. It is not only the ministers
who need to be lectured, but in many cases the Churches.
Frequently the only knowledge the Church has of the
Sunday School is on the occasion of the anniversary, when
the congregation finds all the threepenny pieces they have
to support the school. The teachers not only do the work,
but in most instances they pay for it as well. It seems to
me that many young people in the Senior Classes may very

MR. JOHN ADAMS, M.A., B.SC.
(Professor of Education, University of London).

MR. D. FORSYTH, M.A., D.SC.
(Principal, Leeds Central High School).

REV. W. D. MACKENZIE, M.A., D.D.

(President Hartford Theological

Seminary, Conn., U.S.A.)

Photo] [Elliott & Fry.

PROF. J. ORR, M.A., D.D.
(United Free Church College, Glasgow).

182 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

fore the College curriculum ought to be shaped in such a way
as to provide some training, so that a minister when he leaves
will not be quite helpless. The curriculum is undeniably
already seriously crowded, and especially is it crowded in con-
sequence of the Colleges' closer relations with the Universities.
Of course when students take the Arts course they have a
certain amount of training in psychology, but the fact that
they have a training in ps3 r chology does not necessarily mean
they have a training in child psychology or in the art of
teaching. It means that they get a foundation on which
it is easy to build rapidly an elementary knowledge of child-
psychology and teacher-training. I feel strongly that the
claim of the Sunday School is so paramount that other things
will have to give way to it.

Professor S. W. GREEN. I do not think that the real
difficulty lies with the Theological Colleges. As soon as
the Churches show that they desire the minister to receive
that particular kind of training it will be given. But the
Churches and the schools are not ready to insist upon
having properly trained teachers ; they have to be converted.
I do not for a moment believe that ministers would shirk the
extra work. I believe they would welcome it on the lines
laid down by Professor Adeney.

Mr. EDWARD TOWERS. If students went out into the
ministry thoroughly equipped to take their position at the
head of the schools and could show the teachers how to
teach, their power in the Church would be multiplied enor-
mously.

Mr. ALFRED SINDALL. I am glad to have heard the remarks
of Professor Adeney, because he said certain things which no
layman would have dared to say. It is not only the ministers
who need to be lectured, but in many cases the Churches.
Frequently the only knowledge the Church has of the
Sunday School is on the occasion of the anniversary, when
the congregation finds all the threepenny pieces they have
to support the school. The teachers not only do the work,
but in most instances they pay for it as well. It seems to
me that manv voung people in the Senior Classes may very

MR. JOHX ADAMS, M.A., H.SC.
(Professor of Education, University of London).

MR. D. FORSYTH, M.A., D.SC.
(Principal, Leeds Central High School).

REV. W. D. MACKENZIE, M.A., D.D.

(President Hartford Theological

Seminary, Conn., U.S.A.)

Phcto] [Klliott ~ l-'n.

PROF. J. ORR, M.A., D.D,
(United Free Church College, Glasgow).

THE DISCUSSIONS 183

well be prepared for teaching, by other teachers taking them
into their classes and showing them how the work should
be done. Until there is more recognition of the responsi-
bility of the teacher's office it will not be appreciated at its
true worth. The appointment of the teacher should be by the
vote of the Church as well as by that of their fellow teachers.
In conclusion, Mr. Sindall expressed his deep gratitude to
the Council of the Sunday School Union for holding the
Conference, and -his feeling of joy at the evident sympathy
that had been expressed by everybody in the work of the
Sunday School.

The following resolutions were then adopted :

I. GRADING IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

1. That this Conference, during full discussion of
various subjects bearing upon the Religious Education of
Young People, has again and again been forced to the
conclusion which it now places on record, that, for the
efficient instruction and training of young people it is
absolutely necessary that the PRINCIPLE of GRADING
should have fuller recognition in the Sunday School than
is at present accorded to it.

2. The Conference urges upon Sunday School leaders
that the general grading of THE SCHOLARS should,
wherever possible, follow, at any rate, the plan of
separate Departments :

(a) Infants or Primary School (up to 8 years of age) ;

(b) The Middle School (from 8 to 15 years of age),

divided either into Lower Middle and Upper
Middle, or Junior and Intermediate, whichever
terms are preferred ; and

(c) The Senior Department or Institute (from 15 years

of age upwards).

3. Further, this Conference believes that the TEACHING,
both in its subject-matter and method, should itself be
graded, so as to be adapted to the needs of the various
Departments of the School.

Ages are simply named by way of general guidance,

184 BIBLE TEACHING BY MODERN METHODS

the Conference fully realising that the age classification
must frequently be modified when the capacities of the
scholars are considered.

II. THE PERSONNEL OF THE INTERNATIONAL
LESSON COMMITTEE, BRITISH SECTION.

This Conference respectfully suggests to the Council
of the Sunday School Union, that it would be advisable
to enlarge the British Section of the Lesson Committee,
to make it as widely representative of the British
Churches as possible.

III. THE INTERNATIONAL LESSONS.

The Conference, further, urges upon the Council of
the Sunday School Union, that the time has now come
to consider the necessity of re-modelling the Interna-
tional Lesson system, to bring it more into line with
the needs of the modern Sunday School ; and asks
that the Council shall take such steps as may be
necessary to ensure the discussion of this matter by the
International Lesson Committee.

IV. THEOLOGICAL COLLEGES AND THE MINISTER
AS A TEACHER-TRAINER.

This Conference recommends that the Clergyman
or Minister should, where possible, conduct, or arrange
to have conducted by some competent person, a Class
or Classes for Teacher-training in connection with his
own Church and School.

Further, in order to fit students for the Ministry to
undertake this important work the Conference most
respectfully invites the sympathetic co-operation of
Tutors and Committees of Theological Colleges.

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